American member Henry brought into line is addressing someone else (10)
I believe the answer is:
apostrophe
'american' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to communication as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'member henry brought into line is addressing someone else' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'henry' could be 'h' (symbol for the unit of electrical inductance) and 'h' is found in the answer.
'line' could be 'rope' (rope is a kind of line) and 'rope' is located in the remaining letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for apostrophe that I've seen before include "in Charley's Aunt ?" , "At which point discarded letters" , "detail of punctuation" , "Mark showing omission of letters" , "greengrocer abuses it!)" .)