Local Revision: Wordiness

            The following blog post takes the longest portion of my Project 1 draft, and using tips from the Rules for Writers, I will try and cut down the paragraph by 25-30%. This exercise is to help learn how to effectively write a paragraph without making it too wordy. The first section displays the first draft and the section portion shows the revised and shortened version.

Vivek Bisht. "Recheck and Revise Before Publishing" 11/21/2015 via Flickr.
Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

First Draft:          

Many people are wondering why Facebook has made such a bold decision and why at this time. For a little over 2 years, Facebook has been dealing with many complaints from organizations like Everytown and their subgroup, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. These groups have been doing everything in their power to try and get Facebook to crack down on their policies and get rid of all private sales of guns on their social platforms. Facebook and Instagram are two of the most popular forms of social media, meaning that they have a huge impact on the society we live in. With Facebook hosting pages for unauthorized gun sales, tens of thousands of unlicensed buyers and sellers were trading their firearms without going through a formal process of background checks and what not. Barack Obama made his statement on January 4th, 2016 to implement new executive actions to reduce gun violence. Shortly after Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook made their decision public and released this information to the press.

Revised Version:

 Facebook and Instagram are two of the most popular forms of social media, having a huge impact on our modern society. It hosted pages for unauthorized gun sales, allowing tens of thousands of unlicensed buyers/sellers to trade their firearms without going through a formal purchase process. For almost 2 years, Facebook has dealt with organizations like Everytown and their subgroup, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. These groups have done everything in their power to get Facebook to eliminate all private sales of guns on their social platforms. President Obama made a statement on January 4th, 2016 to implement new executive actions to reduce gun violence. Shortly after Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook made their decision public to ban all private sales of guns on their platforms.

This revised version takes out all of the fluff of my original draft making the information clear and presenting it in a concise manner. I personally think that this version is better because it makes it a shorter read and gets the point across. It also seems to be set up in a more logical manner than the initial draft, seeing as though I moved around a few of the sentences. However it does not seem as inclusive to the audience.