How to Use · Better prompts
Ask better questions, get more useful answers
A prompt is a brief for a task. Clear instructions make your expectations easier to follow, but even an excellent brief needs a checked result.
Start with the job and the reader
“Help with this” leaves the assistant to choose the kind of help. “Suggest three clearer headings for this community newsletter” identifies a task and a setting. Before writing a prompt, decide what you want to be different when the work is finished.
Name the intended reader when it matters. An explanation for someone encountering a topic for the first time needs different vocabulary from a note to a colleague. You do not need an elaborate fictional role for the assistant; a straightforward description of the audience is often more useful.
Give relevant context and limits
Include the information that changes the answer: purpose, audience, length, required points and constraints. Google’s prompt guidance recommends clear instructions, context and examples, while treating prompt development as an iterative process.
More context is not always better. A long unrelated conversation can bury the important request. For an event notice, provide the confirmed time and venue, not the entire history of planning it. Remove personal details that the task does not require.
Draft a 90-word notice for an adult beginners’ drawing group. Use a welcoming, plain-English tone. Confirmed details: Saturday, 2–3 pm, community hall, materials provided. Do not invent a price, booking link or accessibility information. List missing details separately.
Show what a good result looks like
An example can clarify format. If you want a list of tasks, show one entry such as “Task — owner — due date”. Make clear that it is a formatting example, especially if its names or dates are invented.
Examples can also accidentally narrow the answer. If every sample is very formal, a request for friendly language may not be enough to counter that pattern. Choose a short, representative example and remove details you do not want repeated.
Separate source material from instructions
Put the material to be summarised under a label such as “Source text”. Put your task above it. This makes it easier to see which words describe the job and which words are the material being worked on.
For example, ask for a summary of what a document actually says and a separate list of unanswered questions. A summary should not quietly incorporate the assistant’s guesses. An instruction to use only your document is helpful, but you still need to check whether it complied.
Revise the specific problem
If the first version is too vague, identify what is missing. “Include the confirmed start time and remove the invented booking deadline” gives a useful correction. “Make it better” asks the assistant to guess again.
Change one important feature at a time when you are learning what works. Keep an acceptable version before making another revision; longer or more polished is not necessarily more accurate. If the task repeatedly fails, simplify it or do the difficult part yourself.
Check the answer against your brief
Use the original requirements as a small checklist. Does the notice contain the right time? Is it within the length requested? Did it invent a fee or imply access arrangements you have not confirmed? Check those details before worrying about elegance.
Asking the same system whether its answer is correct can reveal mistakes, but it is not independent verification. For factual claims, open the original source or check with the responsible organisation. Prompting improves how you communicate a task; it does not transfer responsibility for the result.
Sources and further reading
The exercises and examples are Virel AI’s practical suggestions. These resources provide supporting guidance and broader context.