Who knew this was going to have multiple parts?! Well, I did but that’s besides the point.
If you didn’t read part 1, here’s a link - Basic markdown can add some structure to your prompts
If you don’t want to read it then the summary is that if you want better quality output from AI tools with less likelihood for hallucinations or slop, add some structure to your prompts with markdown. Then I showed you how to indicate headings using markdown syntax.
Let’s keep going.
Another popular use of structured text is emphasis by using italics, bold, or both.
Italicized text looks like this and is easy to do with markdown. Just add an asterisk before and after whatever you want to italicize.
So if I re-write the sentence above using markdown - Italicized text *looks like this* and is easy to do with markdown.
There are no spaces between the asterisks and the words.
Bold text looks like this and is similar to do with markdown. Just add 2 asterisks before and after whatever you want to bold (or is it embolden?)
So if I re-write the sentence above using markdown - Bold text **looks like this** and is similar to do with markdown.
Bold and italics look like this and can be applied with 3 asterisks before and after.
Re-written using markdown - Bold and italics ***looks like this*** and can be applied with 3 asterisks before and after.
If you just use # and * to structure your prompts, it can make such a massive difference. Just think about how you structure what you write when you use a word processor like MS Word, Google Docs, etc.