multi-author-harmoniser

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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).