Lesson 3: The Importance of Word Choice and Consistent Writing
Maintain consistency in collaborative projects
It is especially important to maintain a consistent voice and style when more than one writer works on a single document. Readers should not be able to tell which parts of a book are written by one writer and which by another, or even that more than one writer worked on the book.
Minor deviations from the accepted style may not be noticeable in a book written by one person (as long as they are consistent) but if two or three different people each differ from the standard in different ways it will be noticeable and distracting to the reader.
One way to avoid such problems is to require each writer to read and edit those chapters or sections written by the other writers. If one of the other writers does something consistently different from the way you do it, it should be very easy to spot. Once these problem areas are identified you as a group can determine the best way to fix them and provide the needed consistency.
