Prose Revision Assignment

Suburbanization Paragraph Revision

Please revise the paragraph below on suburbanization. The paragraph is 142 words and the final should be between 100 and 85 words. Remember, let’s try to make the paragraph below active and parallel, and do your best to limit the strings of prepositional phrases and nominalizations. Also, your revision should NOT change the original meaning of the paragraph. The first sentence is fine, by the way.

Since 1945, suburbanization has been the most significant fact of American social and political life. The people responsible for the compiling of the 1970 census caught its magnitude with the observation that for the first time more people in metropolitan areas resided outside the boundaries of cities than within them. The 1980 figures represent a confirmation of this trend and a measurement of its acceleration. Moreover, the explosion of the population of the suburban areas has been accompanied by a marked decline in the population of cities. The result has been a steady growth of suburban power in American politics. The changing numbers have made its dominance inevitable, but the fact that the participation of suburbanites in registration and voting produced a much larger percentage than did the participation of city dwellers has resulted in an acceleration of the shift.

Guglielmo Marconi Paragraph Revision

Please revise the following paragraph so it’s more readable. Like the paragraph above, make the sentences active and parallel, trying your best to limit the strings of prepositional phrases. I have purposely not given you a specific word count for this paragraph. Again, your revision should NOT change the original meaning of the paragraph. Hint: if a sentence sounds like something Yoda would say, you should probably revise it. Consider combing some sentences as well.

International headlines were first made by Guglielmo Marconi when wireless transmissions were successfully sent and received across the English Channel on March 27, 1899 . This significant event marked the first international wireless communication. Many important English and French reporters made an observation and bore witness to the event, and Marconi was promoted as an international celebrity much like Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell by the press. Less than three years after crossing the English Channel , a solidification of celebrity status by Marconi was made when signals were transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean on December 12, 1901 . Reports concerning what had happened between Poldhu in Cornwall , England and Signal Hill in St. John’s , Newfoundland were made by newspapers around the world. Without using wires a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean was made. Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909 for crossing the Atlantic .

Housing Prices Paragraph Revision

Please revise the paragraphs below on the housing market. Don’t worry about length; instead, find subjects and agents (verbs hidden in nouns) and rewrite the paragraph in Plain Language. Do your best to limit passive voice, strings of prepositional phrases, and nominalizations. Also, your revision should NOT change the original meaning of the paragraph. Think about the entire paragraph first, and then revise.

It is noted that sales of existing homes have made a falling for five months in a row ending in the month of August as the once-booming housing market slowed further.  On Monday a report stating that existing home sales made a slippage in the nature of 0.55 percent to an annual rate of 8.45 million units was made by The National Association of Realtors.  Home prices have also experienced a drop in value due to the slowdown in sales, and it is duly noted that the median price of an existing home sold in August dropped to $195,000, which is 1.68 percent below last year.  This current situation is now marking the first year-over-year price decline in more than 11 years.  A report last week that construction of new homes and apartments plunged by 6 percent in August has now been followed by the weakness in existing home sales.  This weakness is the cause pushing building activity to the lowest level since early 2003.

TURN THESE REVISED PARAGRAPHS IN WEDNESDAY 2/16/2011.