Appositives

When a name and a descriptive phrase are paired in a sentence, punctuation matters. The second of the pair must be surrounded by punctuation – a comma in front, a comma or period after: “John Smith, the vice president, said” … “The vice president, John Smith, said” Note that the presence of an article (a, an, the) or possessive (Kent State’s) is required at the start of the descriptive phrase.

Textbook: 16:1.E