Imposing a Response Format on the AI: Lists, Tables, Length

You ask a simple question and you get a sentence praising your question, four paragraphs of general considerations, seven bullets with bold headings, then an offer of further help. The information you were after is somewhere in the middle. By default, many tools produce that format, and it can be fixed in one line if you know what to ask.

Setting a length the AI can hold to

Language models are bad at counting words. Ask for 300 words and you might get 260 or 350. That's no problem for a blog post, but it is for a hard limit, like the character count of an ad or a tag.

Bigger units work better than precise counts. "Three sentences" or "two paragraphs" are generally respected, because the model sees the structure it's building.

For a truly hard limit, count the result yourself, with a spreadsheet or your word processor's counter. Aiming below the ceiling and asking for several versions saves you from starting over.

A good length instruction also says what to sacrifice. "If you're running out of room, keep the numbers and drop the examples" spares you a text cut off in the wrong place.

Cutting the wrapping

To remove the opening and closing pleasantries, say so clearly:

Start directly with the answer, with no introduction, without rephrasing my question and with no concluding sentence or offer of help. If the information is uncertain, say so in one sentence at the end.

You can keep this instruction in your custom instructions if your tool offers them. It will then apply to all your conversations without you having to paste it, and you can remove it just as easily.

Choosing the structure based on what you'll do with the result

The right question to ask yourself is: what am I going to do with this answer next?

• You'll read it to make a decision: a comparison table, or a recommendation followed by its reasons.
• You'll carry out a series of actions: a numbered list, one action per line, with the expected result.
• You'll paste it into an email or a document: paragraphs of text, with no bold or headings.
• You'll process it in another tool: a data format. For a program, go with JSON and structured data.

Lists deserve a warning. They make everything look more readable and hide the links between ideas. A bulleted briefing note looks complete, but doesn't say why one thing leads to another. If the reasoning matters, specify "in full sentences, no bullets."

Tables: specify the columns and what happens to empty cells

A restaurant owner is comparing three quotes from beverage suppliers. The weak prompt:

Compare these three quotes.

He'll get a pleasant text commenting on each offer. The corrected prompt sets the shape of the result:

Here are three quotes from beverage suppliers for my restaurant:

[QUOTE 1]
[QUOTE 2]
[QUOTE 3]

Present them in a table with one row per common product and these columns: Product, Unit price supplier A, Unit price supplier B, Unit price supplier C, Special terms.

Copy the numbers exactly as they appear in the quotes, without rounding. If a product isn't offered, write "absent." Don't make any estimates.

Below the table, add two lines at most on differences in delivery or minimum order.

The "absent" and "no rounding" instructions matter as much as the columns. Without them, an empty cell can be filled with an estimate without anything flagging it. Check a few rows against the originals anyway: a copying error is still possible, especially from a poorly read PDF.

Pasting into a spreadsheet works better or worse depending on the tool. If the displayed table pastes badly, add this sentence to your prompt: "Give the table in CSV format with a semicolon as the separator, in a code block." Paste the result into a file, or use your spreadsheet's text-to-columns function. The semicolon avoids a clash with the decimal commas in French prices.

Giving a template to fill in

When you want the same shape every time, write it out. It's the most reliable method, because the AI sees the expected result. A nonprofit secretary who writes meeting minutes from loose notes can rely on this:

From the notes below, write the minutes following exactly this structure, without adding any section:

**Meeting of [DATE]**
Present: (names mentioned in the notes)

**Decisions**
- one decision per line, phrased in the past tense

**Action items**
- Who, what, by when. If the date or the person isn't in the notes, write "to be confirmed."

**Deferred items**
- one line per item

Style: short sentences, no interpretation. Put in "Decisions" only what was clearly decided. If in doubt, file the item under "Deferred items" and flag it.

Notes:
[PASTE YOUR NOTES]

The template can also take the form of a filled-in example, which the few-shot technique uses in more detail. The format sets the shape, and the substance always depends on good context.

When a format took you time to get right, save the exact wording. Look at your last overly long response, spot what you actually used from it, and write that structure into your next prompt of this kind.