7 Prompt Writing Improvements You Can Make Today

You know that moment when you're speaking a different language than your AI assistant? You carefully craft what seems like the perfect prompt, hit send, and... get something completely off-base in return. Frustrating, right?

If you're tired of playing the prompt-roulette game with ChatGPT, Claude, or other large language models, you're not alone. Most of us start our AI journey thinking these tools can read our minds — only to discover we need to learn how to communicate with them effectively.

That's why we're excited to launch Prompt School, where you can access lessons, guides, and resources to use generative AI more effectively. Think of it as your personal translator for speaking "AI" fluently.

To kick things off, here are 7 tried and true best practices.

👀 Are you a visual or auditory learner? Watch the full session here, led by Copy.ai's Prompt Engineer, Anna Bernstein.

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Let’s dive in!

1. Take advantage of synonyms

Tried explaining something complex to someone who just isn't getting it? Let’s pretend you’re training a new employee on a complex process—like configuring your CRM or building a new lead scoring model.

As you’re guiding them through each step, they stop you and ask, “Wait, so what do you want me to do here?” Would you find another way to explain things to them, or immediately decide they’re incapable of completing the task?

AI operates in a similar fashion—only instead of requesting clarification, it simply generates the wrong output. When this happens, people often mistakenly conclude the prompt is beyond AI’s scope of capabilities. However, sometimes all it takes is an alternative or additional phrase to get the right response.

In the world of generative AI, synonyms are your best friend. There are infinite ways to describe sales and marketing prompts, and you need the right combination of words for AI to understand what you’re looking for.

Instead of giving up on your first attempt, try rewriting. If you get stuck, you can even ask AI for suggestions, like:

• Give me 10 synonyms for [word]
• Give me 10 ways of rewording the following sentence: [Sentence]

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So before you throw your hands up and declare "ChatGPT just doesn't get me!" — try speaking its language in a different way. Your AI-generated content might suddenly transform from confusing to brilliant.

2. Be consistent with how you label elements

Now that you've expanded your AI vocabulary with synonyms, let's talk about consistency — because even AI gets confused when you keep changing the names of things.

Synonyms are an invaluable addition to your prompting toolkit—but there’s a catch. It’s important to use the same label for the same element throughout the entire prompt.

For instance, if you’re asking AI to generate email copy, don’t refer to “recipients” in one section of your prompt and “prospects” in another. AI gets confused by inconsistencies, and outputs may be more random or off base as a result.

It’s equally important to limit each label to a single element. Prompts should clearly define the desired output, and repurposing labels makes it difficult for AI to understand exactly what you’re looking for.

✖️ Bad

Although mixing and matching labels won’t necessarily cause an error message, output will be a lower quality. Much like a confused human trying to figure out if they should address their colleague as Assistant Regional Manager or Assistant to the Regional Manager (for all of The Office fans out there), AI will usually skimp out the details if it doesn’t know what something means.

✅ Good

Now, notice the difference in the output below after changing just a single word in the prompt:

Write a job posting including the following information:

Job title: Senior Cheese Taster

Job description: Testing out cheese at our factory to see if it’s yummy or not

Job location: Siberia

Job requirements: Loves cheese. Lives in Siberia.

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The desired format of the output is immediately clear, while job description is a neatly defined sub-category containing additional information. The result is far more detailed and aligned with the original request.

So remember: in the world of AI prompts, consistency isn't just helpful — it's essential for your chatbot to follow your train of thought.

3. Help AI connect the dots with causative language

With AI, you're trying to explain something complex to a child who keeps asking "but why?" That's essentially what you're doing when writing prompts without causative language.

Causative language helps AI understand causative relationships—cause and effect—between elements (or words) in your prompt.

To get you started, let's break "causative language" into two categories: integrative and transformative"

Integrative language 

Think of integrative language as the bridges between islands of information in your prompt. Integrative language connects ideas and concepts, making it easier for AI to understand how one thing can cause another thing to happen. 

When to use integrative language 

Use integrative language when AI is ignoring an element of your prompt. For example, AI will signal you to use more integrative language by ignoring a particular element, which indicates a failure to connect it with the rest of the prompt.

Integrative language is also necessary for AI to use information from one element to modify another—like rewriting an email or blog post based on feedback.

Integrative phrases can include:

• As result of
• Due to
• Because of
• Subsequent
• Above / below

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Transformative language:

On the flip side, AI can also disproportionately focus on one particular element, or repeat your description verbatim. This means it’s time to bust out the transformative language and clarify the intent of your prompt.

If integrative language builds bridges, transformative language acts like traffic signs that tell AI exactly which direction to go.

When to use transformative language

If you feel AI is missing the point of your prompt, it likely requires clarification. You can do this by replacing general verbs with more specific actions—for example, “Take the concepts from this description and reimagine them as a song” instead of simply “Turn the description into a song.”

Transformative language can also be used to provide additional context, or elaborate on previous explanations. Some handy transformative phrases include:

• For example
• In other words
• To be more specific
• To put it another way
• To put it simply
• In simpler terms
• What I’m trying to say

This helps AI understand the reason behind your prompt, so it can generate more accurate responses.

Using these language patterns in your workflow might seem like extra work at first, but they're the difference between AI that fumbles around in the dark and AI that precisely delivers your desired outcome.

4. Avoid negative language

Pretend that you’ve just received a pair of magical sunglasses, and whenever you put them on, you can time travel. You’re allowed to visit any time, in any place, and the sunglasses can be any color—except yellow.

What color sunglasses are you picturing?

If the answer’s yellow, you may have more in common with AI than you realize. When you tell AI not to do something, it has a tendency to focus on the exact thing you want to avoid.

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix: using positive language. It’s as easy as swapping instructions like “not too formal” for “fun and casual”.

✖️ Bad

• Write 5 persuasive headlines for [landing page]. Tone should be professional but not overly formal.
• Generate copy for outreach email based on [prospect’s LinkedIn page]. Mention relevant features from [product description], except for Feature A.
• Analyze customer reviews from [company]’s G2 page. List the 3 most frequently mentioned pain points. Based on those pain points, write a persuasive response that does not exceed 500 characters.

✅ Good

• Write 5 persuasive headlines for [landing page]. Tone should be professional, friendly, and conversational.
• Generate copy for outreach email based on [prospect’s LinkedIn page]. Mention Features B and C from [product description].
• Analyze customer reviews from [company]’s G2 page. List 3 most frequently mentioned pain points. Based on those pain points, write a concise and persuasive response up to 500 characters.

5. Get creative with verbs to improve generative AI outputs

We all know that one friend who uses fifty words when five would do, right? And have you ever been trapped in a conversation with someone who takes forever to get to the point—so long that you forget what they were even trying to tell you in the first place?

AI is the same way. Meandering verbs get in the way and distract from the main purpose of your prompt. Whenever you’re writing, be on the lookout for word clutter, and cut down anything that doesn’t need to be there.

Sometimes this means getting creative and phrasing your prompt in a more succinct way. For example, “give more information and details about this” can be condensed to “elaborate on this.”

A good prompt isn’t just clear, but concise.

Think of it as the difference between sending your AI on a winding country road with multiple detours versus a direct expressway — both might eventually reach the same destination, but one path is significantly faster and more efficient.

6. Provide enough context

With AI being, well, artificial, it makes sense to address it more like a search engine or Alexa than an actual person. However, while AI can do a lot of things, it still can’t read your mind.

A prompt that lacks context is no different than assigning someone a bunch of tasks without any direction—it may take several tries to get the result you want.

The best way to generate a good output is by taking the time to ensure your prompt contains clear, relevant information from the start.

So how do you know when you’ve included enough details?

The sheet of paper test

One way to tell is with the sheet of paper test. If you were instructing a person instead of AI and handed them a piece of paper with the prompt written down, would they know what to do? If you think they’d have follow up questions, that’s a good sign that your prompt needs more details.

Even the most advanced large language models like GPT-4 and Gemini need proper context — it's like trying to navigate without a map. No matter how smart the driver, they'll still get lost without directions.

‍7. Bonus: Take advantage of Copy.ai’s Prompt Improve feature

AI can get really meta—especially when it processes self-generated synonyms to better understand your prompts. You can also leverage AI-enabled features like Copy.ai’s Prompt Improve, which makes automated, real-time prompt improvement suggestions right there in the chat.

It’s no secret that prompt engineering is part art, part science, and it takes practice to get into the groove. However, the ability to refine prompts as you’re writing them helps ensure that the content you generate is high quality. Beyond just making recommendations, however, Prompt Improve actually reformats your prompt to provide additional details and context for a better output.

This interactive approach to prompt writing helps content creators skip the trial-and-error stage that often comes with brainstorming AI prompts — it's like having Microsoft Word's spelling correction, but for your actual thinking process.

The AI Ecosystem & Prompt Writing

Before we wrap up, let's zoom out and look at the bigger picture of artificial intelligence and how these prompt techniques fit into the broader landscape.

Effective prompt writing isn't just relevant for ChatGPT — it applies across the entire ecosystem of AI models including OpenAI's GPT series, Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, and specialized tools like DALL-E for image generation. Each of these systems uses natural language processing to interpret your instructions, but they all benefit from clear communication.

When you use AI in professional contexts, the quality of your prompts directly impacts your results. This is particularly important for:

• Content Creation: Whether you're drafting blog posts, social media captions, or email newsletters
• Visual Assets: Using DALL-E or Midjourney to generate images requires equally thoughtful prompting
• Data Analysis: Working with LLMs (Large Language Models) to interpret complex datasets
• Code Generation: Getting AI-powered algorithms to write efficient, bug-free code

The most successful AI users approach prompt writing with a step-by-step methodology — they draft, test, refine, and iterate until they get the desired output. This systematic approach yields consistent results across different AI tools.

Remember these key takeaways about writing style when crafting prompts:

1. Be conversational but precise
2. Structure inputs logically
3. Provide examples when helpful
4. Match your writing style to your intended output

As AI continues to evolve, these fundamental skills will only become more valuable. The difference between basic and advanced AI use often comes down to prompt engineering — a skill worth developing no matter which platforms you prefer.

Final Thoughts

Writing effective AI prompts isn't just about getting what you want — it's about communicating in a way that AI can truly understand and respond to. Think of it as learning a new language where the fundamentals matter more than you might initially realize.

Many startups and established companies alike (even those featured in Forbes) are discovering that the difference between mediocre and extraordinary AI work often comes down to how well you communicate with these digital assistants. After all, even the most powerful machine learning technology is only as good as the instructions we give it.

Ready to take your AI communication skills to the next level? Here are some resources to help you continue mastering the art of working with generative AI tools:

• What is a Good Conversion Rate? The Ultimate Guide to Better Conversion
• Choosing the Right LinkedIn Ad Type in 2025
• How to Write A Business Plan And Implement It in Simple Steps

Want to put these prompt writing techniques into practice? Copy.ai's GTM AI platform is designed to help you implement these strategies with ease. Try Copy.ai today or book our free demo and discover how much more efficient your content creation process can become when you're speaking AI's language fluently.

Because at the end of the day, better prompts lead to better results — and that's a language everyone understands.