✍️ Golden Rule Corollary
If your prompt isn’t clear, ask the AI to help you write it.
✍️ Ask the AI to Help You Shape the Prompt
When you’re struggling to phrase your question in a way that’s clear, complete, and unambiguous, ask the AI to help you write the prompt.
Clarity and intent are the core signals AI systems use to produce high-quality answers.
AIs excel at reorganizing, clarifying, and tightening language, especially when you provide:
- Your rough draft phrasing
- A short list of needs or constraints
- The desired outcome (what you want back)
Example: Compare Business Databases
User’s rough attempt:
“I need a prompt that helps me compare business databases, but I don’t know how to phrase it.”
User’s request to the AI:
“Here’s what I’m trying to do. Rewrite my idea as an effective prompt:
— I want to compare Bloomberg, Capital IQ, and LSEG Workspace
— I need strengths, weaknesses, and use-cases
— Include UF library relevance and recommended data queries”
AI-generated refined prompt:
“Compare Bloomberg, Capital IQ, and LSEG Workspace for academic research at the University of Florida. Explain strengths, limitations, best-fit use cases, and sample database queries a business student or librarian might run to evaluate quality. Present findings in a comparison table with brief notes on UF-specific relevance.”
🟦 Takeaway: Your initial wording doesn’t have to be perfect. A rough draft + intent is enough for the AI to help shape an effective prompt.
✍️Example (Classics)
User’s rough attempt:
“I need a prompt that helps me compare ancient Greek and Roman political ideas, but I can’t figure out how to set it up.”
User’s request to the AI:
“Rewrite this as a clear research prompt. Here’s what I want:
— Compare key political concepts in classical Athens and Republican Rome
— Include primary sources (philosophical texts, speeches, law codes)
— Highlight similarities, differences, and historical context
— Present findings in a structured outline suitable for a research paper”
AI-generated refined prompt:
“Compare core political concepts in classical Athens and Republican Rome. Use primary sources (such as Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Aristotle’s Politics, Cicero’s speeches, and the Roman Twelve Tables) to examine ideals of citizenship, civic duty, law, and political authority. Identify major similarities and differences, discuss each system in its historical context, and present findings in an outline suitable for an upper-level Classics research paper.”