AI Quick Tips 24: Ask how to “make it better”

You can use ChatGPT to improve a piece of writing or just make it different.  

This can be an email, a blog post, marketing copy, a grant proposal, a contract (be careful with legal docs though), a white paper, a book review, etc.  Any type of writing that you can feed into the prompt somehow (directly, link, etc.)

You can literally ask it to “make it better”.  For example

Please review the following email and tell me how I can make it better

{email text}

That was a really short example that honestly might not get very good results for a few reasons

• You didn’t define what better means
  • I.e., more concise, more descriptive, more optimistic, etc.
• You didn’t give any context
  • I.e., who is it being sent to, who is it coming from, what is the general tone, etc.
• You left too much for it to assume

This was a “bad” example but I added it because this is what I see most people do.  

Here is a better example

Please review the email delimited by triple quotes and rewrite it in a more authoritative tone in 500 words or less.

This is a message from a Director to one of their direct reporting staff members who has been displaying insubordinate behavior

“””
{email text}
“””

This is still lacking some context but it can be fine-tuned through follow-up prompting.  The delimiters are also not necessary in a prompt that is this short but it is a good habit to get into so that things are clear.

Experiment and see what works.