Every day, artificial intelligence (AI) rekindles my passion for a rich and demanding craft: writing, joining and structuring words. More impactful than the arrival of the Internet, AI is shaking up my habits, my thinking and my instincts. As I enter my third year of daily AI use, I have a few modest observations and tips to share.
Keep up with technology—everyone can do it
Do you have decades of professional experience? Terrific: you’ve got a handle on a variety of organizational concepts and contexts. You’re more than familiar with words like “issues,” “strategies,” “objectives,” “action plan” and “results.” And because you’re able to visualize the steps, the end goal, the impact and the reach of a project, regardless of its scale, you’re ideally positioned to focus your efforts where they matter most: crafting quality prompts.
Think “RICOTT”
In early 2023, I cobbled together this little acrostic, “RICOTT,” to help me better structure my prompts. In an ideal world (if such a world exists), every good prompt kicking off a new conversation with your favourite AI tool would include the following information:
Role: I am …
Issue: I need to …
Context: Because …
Objective: In order to …
Target: For [whom, what]
Tone: [impactful, friendly, compassionate, plain language, etc.]
Insert these elements in any order to optimize the quality of the responses generated by the AI.
It’s just like in the real world: poor instructions often lead to a first draft that misses the mark. That leads to endless rounds of corrections and, ultimately, disengagement. So, repeat after me: “RICOTT.”
Here are a few more thoughts on crafting prompts:
- There’s no point trying to butter up your favourite AI tool by beginning your prompt with things like “You’re a specialist with 30 years’ experience in field X.”
- It makes no difference whether you use “I” or “you” in your prompts.
- You can use French with many of the most popular AI tools.
- And because life is short, don’t waste your time inserting polite phrases. Please and thank you!
Improve unsatisfactory AI responses
In certain upscale circles, over afternoon tea, it’s become fashionable to critique the quality of responses generated by Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude and other Gemini-like tools.
Whenever this situation arises, I offer this humble piece of advice: if you find the output lacking, take a closer look at the input.
If the AI’s proposal strikes you as being off, reformulate, refine and relaunch your prompt. In other words, channel your frustration by writing out your thoughts exactly as they come to you, right there in the prompt field.
The next response will be better because the AI will use a point of comparison (its first answer, which you deemed unsatisfactory) and a new point of clarification (your follow-up prompt) to help it recalibrate.
Steal my signature prompt!
Here’s the prompt I use most often. It’s simple, yet it always makes a few jaws drop when I demonstrate it in the courses I offer on AI-supported copywriting.
Step 1
In the prompt field, insert the “ready-to-go” version of your text, either as an attachment (preferably in PDF format) or by copying and pasting, let’s say just before the first correction stage.
Step 2
Type “Identify any blind spots in this text.”
There you have it: “Identify any blind spots in this text.” That's it!
How does this help you? It allows you to anticipate potential questions about and objections to your text, in terms of both strategy and language.
Not convinced? Take a few seconds to test this prompt on the final version of the last text you worked on.
Final tip: You can apply this same prompt to texts from external sources, from the simplest email to the most complex annual report. It’ll work just as well.
Quantify your prompts
In real life, asking a colleague to help you come up with 30 titles or 50 tips to improve a text isn’t the best way to maintain good working relationships. The good news? AI doesn’t take it personally. It can generate 50 titles almost as easily as it can generate 5, and just as fast.
By adding a number to your prompt, you can access a vast array of options, which you can use as a dashboard to help you identify patterns, combine certain words or segments and draw on your human intelligence and insights.
Most of my prompts therefore include a number: “Propose three options for,” “Generate 10 titles,” “Identify 20 blind spots,” etc.
Go verbatim
The word verbatim is both an adjective and an adverb, and it has a lot to offer.
One of the frustrations with generative AI is its tendency to rephrase everything. To avoid losing control over your original wording, try a prompt like “Clean up this text, verbatim.”
You can also copy and paste a screenshot of a segment you found online and enter “Copy this text, verbatim.”
The same goes for rough notes (Write a summary based on these notes, verbatim) and translations (Translate, verbatim).
This way, you preserve the integrity of your original text and steer clear of reformulations that could distort your intended meaning.
Download the mobile app
Thanks to mobile applications, you can literally hold several AIs in the palm of your hand. You can take a picture of anything you see and ask the AI for a detailed analysis of, comments on or information about the image. Activate the mic to start a voice conversation.
It’s the perfect tool for getting instant advice, whether you’re looking to swap out pine nuts in your pesto recipe or translate a Latin inscription carved into the stone of a Roman building.
Hold on to your humanity
In conclusion, here’s a quick question for you: In your opinion, was this post written by AI?
Obviously not. AI is a powerful tool. It can shape, polish and format every sentence in smooth, universal English, hence the temptation to use it for writing. However, I mostly use it at the beginning of the writing process to generate ideas, plans, lists, summaries and so on, and later in the process to refine, reformulate and revise.
I believe that in the future, compelling, high-impact writing will rely on our capacity to inject emotion and the human touch, allowing it to approach the beauty, fragility and spontaneity of spoken language.
To draw people in, writing must have a certain musicality, shaped by human intuition and contextual awareness. It also requires personal notes, subtleties, narrative breath, unexpected twists, a mix of short, very short, long and very long sentences and sometimes unnecessarily long ones like this one. Rhythm, gentle alliteration and a bit of human warmth will always be essential to good writing.
