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 ![Coastal research landscape used as the Northmoor University hero image.](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2026-01/camilo-botia-k4vFDPJoDZk-unsplash.1600x1200.jpg.avif?itok=ujHvC8nC)

 

 



## The scenario

You are an editor who has inherited a site with a hundred and twenty pages and an editorial standard nobody has time to apply by hand.

Northmoor has three published guidelines — voice and tone, structure and grammar, inclusive language. They are held as context items, which means the same three documents that tell a writer what to do also tell the review what to check. That is the design: the guidelines and the evaluation criteria are one artifact seen from two directions.

## Try this

Run content review on each of the three pages below. Each was written to fail one guideline while passing the other two.

### 1. Voice and tone

Run the review on the news item **"Fall open day draws the largest attendance on record."**

Voice here is scored on the four Nielsen Norman Group dimensions, with a target per surface. News should sit at 2 on matter-of-fact to enthusiastic, with a hard ceiling of 3. This page is a 5. It carries seven exclamation marks against a guideline that forbids them, and it reads as marketing copy on a site where nothing else does.

**What you should see.** A finding on the enthusiasm dimension with a score, and the exclamation marks cited specifically. The twenty other news items should pass.

### 2. Structure and grammar

Run the review on the program page for **Environmental Science**.

Two failures, both mechanical. Headings are in Title Case throughout, against a sentence case rule applied everywhere else on the site. And the second paragraph under the first heading contains a single sentence of about ninety words that should be three or four.

**What you should see.** The heading case flagged consistently, and the run-on identified by location rather than described in general terms. The other eleven program pages should pass.

### 3. Inclusive language

Run the review on the faculty biography for **Dr. Miriam Frost**.

The opening sentence explains her arrival at the university through her husband's job. This is the mild case on purpose. It is not offensive, it is the kind of thing a well-meaning writer produces without noticing, and it defines a professor by a relationship rather than by her work. The other nineteen biographies do not do this.

**What you should see.** The opening sentence flagged, with the reason stated as defining a person relationally rather than by their own role.

## Then run it on the whole site

Three findings across roughly thirty target pages, rather than findings everywhere. That ratio is deliberate — the corpus was generated clean and then three pages were degraded, so the demonstration reads as "three pages need attention" rather than as a triage exercise.

## Why the guidelines are the criteria

A prose style guide is not scoreable. Putting each trait on a spectrum with worked examples at either end makes the rule legible to a model and, critically, checkable. That is why the review can cite a number rather than an opinion.