Prompting is a skill you build by practice.
Getting a sense of what sort of prompting a task needs is a skill you develop over time.
Simple tasks can get away with simple commands:
“Summarise this.”
“Fix this typo.”
“Make this shorter.”
The more complicated the job becomes, the more carefully you need to steer. If your prompt sounds overly detailed, or even a bit redundant, you are probably doing it right. AI does not know what is in your head unless you give it something useful to work with.
As you learn this skill, you will also discover where you can safely say less and still get the result you want. It is like cooking: a beginner may need to measure everything, while an accomplished chef can sense how much seasoning a new recipe needs.
As you will find throughout this website, you will be developing marketable skills for yourself. While one person may need forty prompts and over an hour to get something almost right, you may learn how to get there in five minutes.
AI is a new high-tech paradigm, and NGA members should remember that learning to guide it well is not just convenient. It may become a real advantage.