1. Text processing
Effective prompts and GPT tools can also help us with text-processing tasks such as summarizing, transforming, or editing existing text.
2. Summarize a document
When summarizing text, we need to state our requirements precisely. A concise prompt to summarize will be too vague.
3. Summarize a document
Instead, it's best practice to specify a desired length and the level of detail. Specifying a short overview or a comprehensive summary may be sufficient, but additional detail usually leads to better results. We can include the task of capturing the main points while retaining the original tone of the text.
4. Summarize a document
The document may be difficult to understand, such as a technical document. In this case, we request that the summary be written in a way a specific reader would understand. For example, we ask to summarize the text so that a child would understand it. The result will use more straightforward language and perhaps contain an analogy to help explain the concept.
5. Text transformation
Next, let's construct a prompt for text transformation. Here, we start with an existing body of text. Transformation refers to changing the tone or translating text to another language. For tone changes, the prompt should clearly state the desired new tone. For example, it may be more professional or conversational.
6. Text transformation
We must be specific about the source and target languages for language translation. If there is context we wish to retain or provide, we should specify this in the prompt.
7. Text transformation
Sometimes, we may want to add specific instructions, like improving the grammar.
8. Editing
Finally, we may have written some text already but would like to edit it while keeping the tone of our writing. The prompt can request a review of spelling and grammar while maintaining the original tone and structure, suggest sentence structure and readability improvements, change the text from passive to active voice, or we need to fit our text within a word count limit. We could ask the GPT tool to write the text more concisely. The latter is better done using smaller chunks of text rather than the full text.
9. Iterate
In all cases, we must be specific about the aspects we want to edit, change, or improve. Getting the prompt right the first time can be challenging, but remember, it's a process of iteration and experimentation. Keep at it until you achieve the desired result.
10. Let's practice!
Happy prompting!