Check your working notes against your style sheet with Gemini in Google Docs

What This Does

Halfway through a copyedit your notes and your style sheet drift apart. You jotted "web site" in your notes on day one and wrote "website" on the sheet on day three. Gemini in Docs can take your style sheet as a source and compare it with the working notes in the open document, telling you which entries the sheet does not cover and which it treats differently.

You decide what changes. The sheet, the house guide and the manual your client names are the authorities, and Gemini is not.

Before You Start

• Your style sheet is a file in Google Drive, and your working notes or word list sit in a Google Doc.
• Your account has Gemini. Google's page says it requires an eligible Google Workspace or Google AI plan. The plan this guide's template names is Business Standard ($14/user/month). If you do not see Gemini in Docs, ask your admin or check Google's plan page.
• The Doc holds your own notes, not the manuscript. Spellings of names from an unpublished book are still client material, so if your notes carry them, check your contract or ask your managing editor whether an AI feature may read them. If the answer is no, keep the character-name rows out of the Doc, or use an invented list.
• Check your Gemini settings for how conversations are stored and whether they feed model training, and decide whether that fits what you have in the Doc.

Steps

1. Open the notes Doc and Gemini

Open the Google Doc that holds your notes. Click Gemini. Google says you can show the Gemini bar again by hovering over it at the bottom, and that you can move it to the side panel with Switch to side panel.

2. Add the style sheet as a source

At the bottom bar, click Sources, then Add from Drive. Or type "@" and search for the file. Select your style sheet and click Add. Google says Gemini can use your own documents as a source this way.

3. Ask for a comparison, not a rewrite

Google's page says Gemini shows suggestions directly in your document, with Accept suggestion, Accept all and Reject all. If Gemini proposes edits to your notes, click Reject all. You want a list to read, and your notes stay as you wrote them.

4. Check every item yourself

Take each item, one at a time:

1. Find the entry in the style sheet and read it.
2. Compare it with your note.
3. Decide which is right, using the house guide and the manual your client names for anything doubtful.
4. Fix the note or the sheet by hand.

Nothing from Gemini goes onto the sheet unread.

5. Close the loop

Add the entries the sheet did not cover, once you have decided each one. Date the new version of the sheet.

Real Example

Scenario: Invented sample for Client B, Title A. An excerpt of the style sheet:

• email: no hyphen
• website: one word
• OK: spelled "OK"
• Hartfield: surname, confirmed with the author

An excerpt of your notes:

• e-mail
• web site
• ok
• Ridgemoor (place)
• Hartfield

What you get: Something like a list saying that the sheet does not cover "Ridgemoor", and that your notes differ from the sheet for "e-mail", "web site" and "ok". "Hartfield" matches.

What you do: Open the sheet and confirm that the three differences are real. Then fix the notes and add "Ridgemoor" to the sheet, once the author or the text confirms the spelling. Gemini can miss a difference or invent one, so also run your eye down both lists yourself.

Tips

• Keep a short dated copy of the style sheet before you start. Compare against that, so a mid-session edit does not confuse the result.
• Treat "not covered" as a prompt to look in the sheet, because Gemini may have missed an entry.
• Ask the same question after you add several entries, to see what is still open.
• Do this on notes, not on the manuscript, unless your contract allows it.

Tool interfaces change. If a button has moved, look for Gemini in the bottom bar of Docs and for a Sources or "@" option to add a Drive file.