Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been a game changer for professionals, and generative AI tools are quickly becoming essential for writing documents, blog posts, emails, and more. However, one key element in unlocking the potential of AI can be a little confusing: prompts.
How do you give your AI writing assistant the input—also known as the prompt—it needs to generate accurate, high-quality content? Here, we take a close look at how to get the most out of prompts when using Grammarly’s generative AI features.
What is a prompt?
In the context of generative AI, a prompt is the instructions you give the AI to generate a desired output. These instructions can include the content, composition type, tone, length, audience, and more. These parameters provide your AI assistant with the guidance it needs to craft relevant, exceptional writing.
Full disclosure: Grammarly applies some extra detail to your prompt behind the scenes. It does this to accurately capture your voice and writing context so the writing you generate is relevant and authentic to you.
3 types of prompts
With many chatbots, you have one way to prompt your AI assistant. With Grammarly, you have three. Let’s review them.
1 Custom prompts
In the Grammarly prompt box, you can type any prompt you want—you’re limited only by your imagination. The prompt can take any structure you want, but if you want some inspiration, try using this template:
Write a [composition type] for [audience] that [purpose]. Make it [tone] and [length].
For example:
Write a [business proposal] for [the CEO] that [pitches the value of launching an ebike]. Make it [professional] and [concise].
2 Suggested prompts
The world is still learning how to write effective prompts, so Grammarly also offers hundreds of suggested prompts to help guide you. When you click the Grammarly button, above the prompt box you’ll see a few of these suggested prompts based on your individual context. As you type keywords into the prompt box, the suggested prompts will update.
When you click a suggested prompt, you’ll receive extra guidance about details to include in your prompt, as well as extra configuration behind the scenes to optimize the text you generate.
3 Reply prompts
When replying to an email, you may see a button that says “Reply quickly”. Clicking this button gives you a summary of the original email and three reply prompts. Reply prompts are suggested responses that use the original email to be uniquely relevant to your conversation. Click one to generate a full reply email, complete with accurate names and information.
Once you’ve crafted your prompt, hit enter. You can then review your generated text and click Insert to add it to your document, email, etc.
5 tips for writing effective prompts in Grammarly
1 Be detailed and specific
The more information you provide in your prompt, the more context you give Grammarly’s generative AI to craft accurate, detailed writing. Grammarly plugs into a lot of rich context to help bridge this gap for you, but the result will always be better if you can give more information. Adding details about content, writing purpose, audience, composition type, tone, style, and length can take your generated text from good to great.
2 Don’t sweat the wording
Grammarly is exceptional at turning ideas, jotted notes, and flawed prose into mistake-free writing. Don’t waste time trying to get the wording of your prompts perfect—simply prioritize the details and let Grammarly turn your prompt into high-quality writing.
3 Grammarly is great at rewriting
One of the biggest benefits of using Grammarly’s generative AI is its ability to help with rewriting lackluster or mistake-filled text. Just highlight the text you want to rewrite and try prompts like:
- Sound friendlier / more professional / more exciting
- Make this shorter/longer
- Make this clearer / simpler / more detailed
- Improve this
- Paraphrase/reword this
4 Writing prompts takes practice
The best way to learn how to write great prompts is to write bad prompts! Practice will help you learn what works and what doesn’t. Just like learning how to search the internet or drive a car, there’s no substitute for actually doing it. Grammarly gives you enough monthly prompts to experiment so you can get the most out of its writing assistance. Getting your prompt right might take a few tries and a few tweaks. That’s OK!
5 Be sure to fact-check
Grammarly uses powerful large language models (LLMs) to inform the text you generate, but first and foremost, it provides writing assistance. Grammarly strives to make generated content as accurate, current, and helpful as possible, but the nature of generative AI means that occasionally something Grammarly generates could be incorrect. We recommend fact-checking your generated text, just as you would any other content you write.
What are some example prompts I can try?
We break down prompts into four categories:
Rewrite: Paraphrase, improve, and transform existing text
Examples:
- Sound friendlier / more professional / more exciting
- Make this shorter/longer
- Make this clearer / simpler / more detailed
- Improve this
- Paraphrase/reword this
Compose: Draft a piece of writing from scratch
Examples:
- Write a meaningful birthday message to a colleague
- Draft a proposal for launching an ebike product
- Write a blog post about workplace communication
- Generate a social media post announcing my new job
- Draft an email tactfully asking for a project deadline extension
Ideate: Use AI as a collaboration partner to brainstorm, outline, and unblock ideas
Examples:
- Give me five reasons why customers would buy an ebike
- Create an outline for a product spec
- How can I improve this report?
- What makes a good cover letter?
- Brainstorm ten social media captions about my AI speech
Reply: Get summaries and relevant reply prompts to flow through emails quickly
Your unique context creates these one-click prompts.
Effective prompts will take your relationship with AI to the next level. Augment your productivity and creativity today.
