ur-grue Multi-Author Harmoniser
What This Skill Does
Takes a draft written by two or more contributors and rewrites it as a single, consistent voice — smoothing over clashing tones, register shifts, and stylistic inconsistencies while preserving every author's factual content and reported material.
When To Use This Skill
- When two reporters have jointly written a news feature and their sections read noticeably differently
- When a freelance contribution has been stitched into a staff-written piece and the seams are visible
- When a multi-part investigation has been written by different team members over several months
- When translated content from different translators has been combined into one article
- Before a long-form piece goes to a senior editor and the multiple-author origin would be obvious
What You Need To Provide
Required: The full draft text to be harmonised. Optional: A target house style or reference publication (e.g., "write in the style of a quality broadsheet news feature — authoritative, direct, no first person"); the preferred tense (past or present); whether to preserve each author's section roughly intact or allow restructuring for flow; any passages that must not be changed (confirmed quotes, legal-approved text, translated sections).
How the Assistant Approaches This
- Reads the full draft and maps the stylistic variation: identifies shifts in sentence length, vocabulary register, use of first or second person, punctuation habits, tonal warmth or distance, and paragraph structure — noting roughly where each style shift occurs.
- Establishes a target voice for the harmonised version, either from explicit instructions provided, or — if none are given — by averaging toward the more formal or more consistent of the styles present in the draft.
- Rewrites the full text in the target voice, preserving all factual claims, quotes, and reported information. Where restructuring would help flow, it does so conservatively — keeping the original sequencing unless a clear improvement is available. Returns the harmonised draft in full, followed by a brief editor's note listing the main changes made and any passages that were left as-is (e.g., direct quotes, confirmed legally approved text).
Output Format
- The full harmonised draft, ready to hand to a sub-editor.
- An editor's note (50–100 words) at the end of the output listing: the dominant style inconsistencies found, the voice standard applied, any sections left unchanged and why.
- Length matches the input — no compression or expansion unless instructed.
- Tone of the harmonised draft: matches the target style specified, or defaults to clear, authoritative, third-person newspaper register if none is given.
Quality Criteria
- No factual content has been changed, added, or removed — only style and register
- Direct quotes are reproduced verbatim and not paraphrased
- The harmonised text reads as a single voice throughout — a blind reader could not detect the join points
- The editor's note accurately describes what was changed
- Passages flagged as must-not-change are preserved exactly
Example
Input
Draft text (two-author join visible between sections):
"The regional government announced Tuesday that it will close four public hospitals as part of its austerity programme. Officials said the move would save approximately €40 million annually.
Dr Amira Osei, who has worked at one of the affected facilities for eleven years, is devastated. 'These aren't just buildings — they're the heart of this community,' she told us, her voice cracking. 'People will die because of this decision.' The waiting room behind her was busy even on a Wednesday afternoon, families with small children, elderly patients clutching referral letters.
The cuts are part of a broader fiscal consolidation plan, per the government's Q4 budget statement. It is projected that service delivery in non-urban zones will be adversely impacted. The administration has indicated that a proportion of affected clinical staff may be redeployed to remaining facilities, though precise figures have not been confirmed at this stage."
Target style: Quality broadsheet news feature — third person, past tense throughout, no first person, authoritative but not cold.
Output
Harmonised draft:
The regional government announced on Tuesday that it would close four public hospitals as part of its austerity programme, in a move officials said would save approximately €40 million a year.
Dr Amira Osei, who had worked at one of the affected facilities for eleven years, said the decision would devastate the communities the hospitals served. "These aren't just buildings — they're the heart of this community," she said. "People will die because of this decision." The waiting room behind her was busy on a Wednesday afternoon, with families with young children and elderly patients clutching referral letters.
The closures form part of a broader fiscal consolidation plan set out in the government's most recent budget statement. Officials projected that health service delivery in rural and semi-rural areas would be significantly affected. The administration said a proportion of clinical staff from the affected hospitals could be redeployed to remaining facilities, though precise numbers had not been confirmed.
Editor's note Main changes: The third section had shifted into a more bureaucratic register ("per the government's Q4 budget statement", "adversely impacted", "at this stage") and mixed tenses. Rewritten to match the direct, third-person narrative register of the opening. "We" removed from the interview passage; "told us" changed to "said." Budget reference ("Q4 budget statement") generalised to "most recent budget statement" to avoid jargon. Dr Osei's quotes left verbatim. No factual content changed.
Known Limitations
- The assistant cannot verify whether factual content has changed if the input contains ambiguous or vaguely worded claims — it preserves the wording it receives. Always read the harmonised draft against the original before publishing.
- Very long pieces (over 3,000 words) may show some residual variation in the harmonised output, particularly if the source styles are sharply different. A second pass may be needed.
- The assistant cannot enforce a specific publication's proprietary house style unless that style is described in the instructions. Naming a target publication without specifying the style rules will produce only an approximation.
- Dialect, idiolect, or deliberately unconventional writing in one author's section may be normalised out unless you explicitly flag it as intentional.
- This skill works on text. It cannot harmonise audio, video narration, or multi-author scripts without a transcript.