I love good grammar, or, maybe I should say, I love grammar rules. All those commas, semi-commas, and dashes are there to make the reading of dead words on a dead page sound alive when read. Atleast in my writing.

Many, probably most, of our rules in life come from the past and are no longer really doing any work – or, heavy lifting (as I hear more and more at the end of the decade).  At a dinner party, don't start eating until after the hostess comes from the time when making sure they weren't going to poison you was a bigger issue. Shaking hands showed you weren't carrying a knife.    

But English is alive and most of the rules reflect the living language. And, I like to think, I know most of the rules well enough to know when I can break them. When in doubt, I can always refer to my Strunk and White, my The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, or my Wired Style Book. But I don't think I have ever heard of the rules on appositional phrases, or – for that matter – even knew they existed.

Running into Michael Tomasky's blog entry on appositional phrases is the kind of thing I find fascinating about the Web.