Just wanted to get an idea for ways (web) developers get round the short fall of (most) WYSIWYG editors, whereby the users that are editing the text aren't always HTML literate enough to produce good/great results.
In the past we have resigned ourselves to either locking down the editor or simply not supplying one.
What are other peoples experiences?
If you have the resources (as the question implies you do) you get the users to supply copy and designs in what they do know (Powerpoint, Word, Fireworks, etc) and get the people who can do a correct implementation (but who might not be able to write decent prose, etc) to put it into the HTML/CMS/magicthing.
If I understand your question correctly, my advice would be to allow basic text formatting in the editor (bold, italicize, underline, paragraph breaks, etc). Anything beyond that should be handled either by custom fields in your CMS system that talk to the corresponding template, or directly by your designers / front-end people. There really should be no designing going on in your text editor.
Also, using a templating language like Markdown might help editors feel more comfortable formatting their pages.
Sometimes it is possible to use something like WYMeditor - it isn't that simple but produces clean semantic code. The other way is using some wiki-like code - Markdown for example. And you can ease editor's life by using some helpers like MarkItUp editor (it also supports original Wiki and Textile).