What is the best way to revise this sentence to eliminate wordiness? graciously, the audience rose up and applauded the guest speaker. the audience rose and graciously gave the guest speaker a standing ovation. applauding the guest speaker with a standing ovation, the audience rose. the sentence is correct as written.

In order to eliminate wordiness in this sentence, the best option should be the following one: "Applauding the guest speaker with a standing ovation, the audience rose". In this way, the gerund (applauding) indicates that the action it describes happens at the same time the audience rose. So you would not need to use coordination as in the first example (graciously, the audience rose up and applauded the guest speaker). You could also drop the adverb since it is only an adverb of manner telling something about the way in which the audience rose, it does denote necessary information to understand the meaning of the sentence.

Furthermore, the PP "with a standing ovation" acting as a modifier makes it possible to eliminate the verb used in the second example (to give).

In "the audience rose and graciously gave the guest speaker a standing ovation", the verb "to applaude" is dropped yet the adverb is kept. As I've already said, the adverb only adds information about manner which is not important, so it should be removed. Sentence C is the only one that does not contain the adverb so it is the more economic when it comes to wordiness.

themselves

an intensive pronoun is a pronoun that ends in self or selves, such as himself, herself, themselves, yourself, ourselves. since band members is a third person plural, the correct intensive pronoun would be themselves. if the band was talked about as a collective noun, itself would be the appropriate intensive pronoun. intensive pronouns are used to add emphasis to the noun it's modifying which is why it directly follows it.