Saying exactly what you want

Context tells the AI about your business. Specifics tell it about the actual thing you want back. Skip this half and you’ll still get a generic answer, just one with your business name spelled correctly.

Four things worth spelling out

Most disappointing answers are missing one of four details:

• Format. An email? A text message? A bulleted list? A social caption? Say so.
• Length. “Short” means different things to different people. “Under 100 words” doesn’t.
• Tone. Formal, casual, firm, warm, like you’re texting a mate. Name it.
• Constraints. Anything it must include, or must leave out. A price. A deadline. A phrase you never use.

None of these take more than a few words to add, and each one closes off a place the AI would otherwise have to guess.

The four jobs you’ll use this on most

Customer emails. “Write a follow-up email” invites three paragraphs of padding. “Write a four-line follow-up text, friendly but firm, mentioning the invoice number and a ten-day payment window” gets you something ready to send.

Job ads. “Write a job advert for a barista” produces “passionate individual”, “fast-paced environment”, every generic phrase going. Add “three days a week, £11.50 an hour, weekend availability essential, under 150 words, mention that experience is a bonus not a requirement” and you get an advert for an actual job.

Social posts. “Write something for Instagram” gets five hundred words nobody will read. “Write a two-line caption for a finished oak staircase, casual tone, one relevant emoji, no hashtags, end with ‘message us for a quote’” gets a caption you could post today.

Quote replies. This is where vague specifics cost real money. “Write a quote email” leaves the AI guessing the price, the timeline, what’s included, and it will guess wrong. “Write a quote email for a 20 square metre patio, £2,400 including materials, starting the week of the 3rd, taking four days” gets a draft with nothing left to invent.

For more worked examples across writing, checking numbers and briefing technical work, our guide on prompting for different jobs covers each in more depth.

Specific is not the same as long

Being specific doesn’t mean writing a longer prompt than the answer you want back. It means removing the gaps the AI would otherwise have to fill with a guess. A one-line instruction with format, length, tone and the key facts named will beat a rambling three-paragraph prompt that never actually says what you want.

Next, we look at the fastest way of all to get your own voice into the answer: showing the AI an example of your own work instead of describing it.