# passon — Mind the Gap Phase 3 tracked-changes production

## Identity
- **Project:** *Mind the Gap*, Phase 3 of the proofread workflow — tracked-changes production.
- **Practitioner:** Paul Roebuck.
- **Instance name:** none. Phase 3 is mechanical execution, one-off, not Book Man / Jose lineage. Do not adopt either name.
- **Session date:** 3 June 2026 (outgoing). Incoming session date will be later.

## Recent state

Phase 1 (substantive decisions) and Phase 2 (external verifications) are closed. All 17 decisions taken in the previous session.

Locked decisions, ready for tracked-change application:

### Body / biography

1. **Father's age at death — five.** Body is correct (four mentions). Foundations table line 3186 changes from *"Father gone at three"* to *"Father gone at five"*.
2. **Four rooms — AI room wins.** Ch 9 + TOC + Foundations table stay as-is (factory / boardroom / therapy / AI). About the Author (line 3441) rewrites: keep four-rooms as factory / board / therapy / AI; reframe cancer as the calibrating event that sharpened the instrument (not a fourth room); consulting room still works as the fifth where they converge. Ch 8 lines 1641 and 1759: rephrase the four-rooms lists — either swap *cancer ward* for *AI room*, or rephrase to *"across factory floors, boardrooms, therapy rooms — and, eventually, a cancer ward"*. Practitioner to confirm wording at edit-proposal stage.
3. **Ambassador — former. No change to line 3443.** Body wording stands.
4. **Mouth vs tongue cancer — both stay.** Body keeps *mouth*. About the Author line 3445 keeps *tongue*. No edits.

### Canonical lines

5. **Second canonical line location — Chapter 7.** Front-matter line 43: change *"Chapter 6"* to *"Chapter 7"*.
6. **Ch 4 canonical line wording — front-matter version wins.** Body line 1115 tightens to match front-matter: *"Statistical at mechanism. Commercial at platform. Fluent at every level the user encounters."* Check surrounding paragraph reads cleanly after the tighten.
7. **Canonical Lines Register references — strip.** Remove *"(Canonical Line 1)"* from bibliography line 3225 (Bond entry). Remove *"(Canonical Line 31)"* from bibliography line 3299 ([name held] entry). Rewrite front-matter line 43 to drop *"and are marked as such in the canonical lines register"* — front-matter still quotes the two co-authored lines, just without the register framing.

### Front matter / acknowledgments

8. **NAM placeholder — stays as written.** Line 99 text stands. Broken bold markup around it goes into the visual sweep (see Mechanical list below).
9. **Subtitle — no full stop. Cover wins.** Line 19 (copyright page): remove the full stop, fix the broken bold/italic markup. Match line 3 (cover).
10. **Three Ewan quotes — deliberate. No change.** Lines 3483–3493 stand.

### Colophon / About the Author / back matter

11. **Word count — "more than fifty thousand".** Line 3469 (colophon): rewrite *"this fifty-four-thousand-word manuscript"* to *"this manuscript of over fifty thousand words"* (or equivalent). Matches the Gem dedication style at line 215.
12. **Plugs timeline — two years wins.** Ch 9 line 2001: rewrite *"about a year"* to *"about two years"* (or equivalent — match the "serious AI work" framing in Ch 13 line 2745).
13. **NCPS / NCS line — past tense, drop NCPS abbreviation.** Line 3443: rewrite *"He achieved accredited member status of the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS)."* to *"He achieved Member status of the National Counselling Society on qualification."*
14. **Originated work count — three clinical.** Part Three (lines 3415–3437): remove **The Layers Map** entry (lines ~3431–3433) and the **Additional Intelligence (the term)** entry (lines ~3435–3437). Keep NGE-FOF, Russian Doll Therapy, 12-Stage Cycle of Grief. About the Author count (three + Mind the Gap = four) holds.

### Phase 2 verifications resolved

15. **ISBN registrants — confirmed.** Two registrants intentional. No change.
16. **GPT model name — confirmed.** GPT-5.5 is correct as written. No change.

## Mechanical / typographic — Phase 3 visual sweep

No decisions needed. Apply per the integration report's Bronze findings plus the additional finds from the opening scan:

- **§4 Ch 8 heading style.** Apply Heading 1 to line 1627 *"CHAPTER EIGHT"*. Currently bold-only — does not appear in TOC structurally. Bring it into line with the other fourteen chapters.
- **§7 Stray footer fragment.** Integration report flagged a *"Mind the Gap · CHAPTER FIFTEEN · 1 *Back to Contents*"* line at the literal end of the docx. Did not appear in my pandoc extraction (may already be stripped, or only visible in Word's Print Layout view). Confirm in Word; remove if present.
- **§17 Acknowledgments typos.** Lines 149 (*brough* → *brought*), 151 (*Then came the years and Tarmac* → *Then came the years at Tarmac*; *Mckinsey* → *McKinsey*; *Litle* → *Little*), 251 (*our Sis* — comma punctuation), 713 (Ch 2: capital N on *Not* after comma).
- **§18 Broken markup throughout.** Maria dialogue prefixes (twelve instances in Ch 8), Trap headings (five instances), bibliography italic+bold title runs (~25 instances), and the misc broken bolds listed in the integration report. Word visual sweep — open Print Layout, fix any that show stray bold or unwanted formatting.
- **§19 Units/caps.** Line 2089: *300gb* → *300 GB*. Line 3497 (or my line ~3551): *Four Days before* → *Four days before*.
- **New A — author photo alt-text.** Replace Word's auto-generated *"A person with grey hair / AI-generated content may be incorrect."* alt-text on the image at line 3561. Will be read aloud by screen readers and accessibility tools; needs proper alt-text.
- **New B — closing italic block, line 3555.** Three fixes in one paragraph: (i) close the italic after *"will I ever speak again"* and reopen for the next question; (ii) *grandads* → *grandad's*; (iii) add closing punctuation (full stop or question mark) at the end of the final italic block.
- **New H — missing terminal punctuation.** Line 71 (Bill O.: *"Here. Think about this"* — add full stop inside the closing quote). Line 143 (Gary, Paul, Julie tissues — add closing punctuation).
- **New I — "We wanted for Nothing." (line 223).** Decapitalise *Nothing* unless intentional emphasis. If the latter, italics are cleaner than rogue caps. Practitioner to confirm at edit-proposal stage.
- **New J — *"fifty-thousand words"* (line 215).** Unhyphenate to *"fifty thousand words"* — hyphenate only as compound modifier.
- **New K — double-hyphen at line 251.** Change *"leaves me in awe -- rising as far"* to em-dash form *"---"*.
- **New L — missing terminal punctuation, copyright-page lines 47 and 51.** Add full stops to *"Cover design:..."* and *"Visit the author at paulroebuck.co.uk"*.
- **New M — Ewan blurb missing question mark (line 3566).** *"Who better than a therapist to prepare us for what's next."* — question structure, add *"?"*.

## Deferred to Phase 4 (layout) — do not touch in Phase 3

- Author photo (front-matter slot at line 49 — *"PLACEHOLDER --- to be confirmed at layout"*)
- Font (line 3471 *"PLACEHOLDER FONT"*)
- Index (line 3459)

## Working method (compressed)

Direct, precise, grounded, unsentimental. No waffle, no platitudes. Frame first; structure follows. Short bold headers where useful. Distinguish known / inferred / speculative — never guess silently. Hold views with conviction; update on new argument, not on pushback alone. Paul decides every meaningful change — propose, do not action.

Flag Protocol: RAG (Red / Amber / Green) × GSB (Platinum / Gold / Silver / Bronze). Default no flag. Used only when adding signal. Red placed by consequence not size.

Voice register for Paul's content: direct, exact, working-class grounded — factory floor → boardroom → therapy room → cancer ward. Preserve coined phrases exactly. No smoothing into corporate / therapeutic / AI register.

## First questions for the next session

1. **Confirm working approach.** Recommended: produce tracked changes in batches by section (front-matter, Ch 1–7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10–14, Ch 15, back matter), proposing each batch before saving. Reduces risk of compounding errors across the docx; lets Paul sanity-check the rewrites of About the Author and Ch 8 (Decision 2) before they get baked in.
2. **Scope of session.** Whole docx in one sitting, or split? Estimate: 1.5–2.5 hours depending on how many edits prompt clarification on wording. About the Author and Ch 8 rewrites (Decision 2) plus the closing italic block (New B) will need wording proposals — practitioner approves before saving.
3. **First section to tackle.** Recommended: start with the front-matter / copyright page (Decisions 5, 6, 7, 9, 11; New L, J). Lowest-risk territory, most edits clustered together, builds confidence in the tracked-change rhythm before moving into Ch 8 and About the Author where wording decisions need practitioner input.

## File pointers

**Upload to the new chat alongside this passon:**
- `MindTheGap_FinalManuscript_0.docx` — original manuscript, untouched. Required to produce the tracked-changes Word file.
- `MindTheGap_IntegrationReport.md` — full 22-finding catalogue with line references. Background reference for the mechanical sweep.
- This passon document.

**Skill to read first:** `/mnt/skills/public/docx/SKILL.md` — tracked changes production needs the docx skill. Read it before opening the manuscript.

**Line number caveat.** Outgoing instance's pandoc extraction was 3588 lines; integration report's extraction was 3555. Body line numbers (front matter through Ch 15) align cleanly between extractions; minor drift in back matter only. Cross-check before applying any back-matter edit by content match, not line number alone.

**Global memory note:** Existing Mind the Gap entries reference V42 (~45,500 words). Final manuscript is V83 (~57,400 words). Memory will be updated after Phase 4, not now — work is mid-flight.

## Notes

- One-session mechanical execution. No instance name. No tracker beyond this passon and the integration report.
- This work sits outside any Claude Project. No Project Files vector. Manual uploads only.
- Output of this session is a single Word file with tracked changes visible — handed back to Paul for Phase 4 (visual sweep in Word's Print Layout, where stray-footer fragments, residual markup, and rendering anomalies get caught).
- Decision 2 (Ch 8 + About the Author rewrites) and New B (closing italic block at line 3555) involve actual prose rewriting — propose wording, get explicit approval, then track. Everything else is line-level mechanical.
- Soft footer for the new instance: if anomalies appear on opening the manuscript that this passon and the integration report did not flag, raise them silently before tracked-change work begins.