Challenge
A four-person editing team needed to revise a long, formal emergency-management plan while maintaining a consistent voice, formatting system, terminology, and document structure across multiple contributors.
The instructor used AI to introduce deliberate errors and destructive edits into the source document, creating a realistic technical-editing exercise to identify, validate, and correct problematic changes.
Source document: Jacksonville/Duval County 2021–2025 Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan.
My Role
As team lead and technical editor, I helped divide the work, managed formatting and style, maintained the evolving style guide, integrated supporting content, and prepared the final document for submission.
• Technical editing
• Style management
• Version control
• Multi-author coordination
Editing Criteria
• Clarity
• Concision
• Concreteness
• Coherence
• Consistency
• Correctness
• Completeness
• Credibility
• Constructiveness
• Courteousness
We divided the criteria among editors during the first pass, swapped sections for the second pass, and used the full rubric to maintain consistency throughout the final document.
Editorial Process
Pass 1
Sections divided by editing focus
Sections divided by editing focus
Pass 2
Teams switched sections for a second review
Teams switched sections for a second review
Final Pass
Formatting, style, acronyms, citations, images, and document integration
Formatting, style, acronyms, citations, images, and document integration
Multi-pass review: Responsibilities were divided by editing focus, then sections were exchanged so the document received multiple review perspectives.
Document Control
We used version control to track editing passes, maintained soft deadlines for each review stage, and updated the stylesheet as the document evolved. The team also performed a final review when transferring the working document from Google Docs into Microsoft Word.
Outcome
The team completed a full-document edit with a consistent voice and formatting, coordinating specialized reviews across contributors. My final responsibilities included applying the adapted style, integrating images and alt text, and preparing the document for submission.
• Multi-author review
• Two controlled editing passes
• Consistent final document
Final Deliverable
