ChatGPT Tips & Tricks: How to make the best prompts & more

Jitendra Soni
ChatGPT Tips & Tricks - image depicting AI with ChatGPT logo

Interested in some cool ChatGPT Tips and Tricks? Here are some hacks that can help you get the best out of ChatGPT and become a pro with the AI tool.

ChatGPT is, without any iota of doubt, one of the most commonly used AI-powered tools. Not only has it overtook some of the most used software and applications, but it has also changed the way people use AI tools for work and fun.

Interestingly, ChatGPT is OpenAI’s second product. The first one was DALL-E, an AI-powered image generator. OpenAI has also introduced a premium tier of ChatGPT called ChatGPT Plus that offers access to the powerful GPT4 large language model while the free version runs on GPT 3.5.

So, let us help you get the most out of ChatGPT with the help of some exciting tips and tricks.

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Use simple and precise prompts

ChatGPT isn’t as smart as you think. It needs direction, especially if you want it to offer a response that matches your requirements. You need to be very clear about what you ask. You will get unclear information if your prompt seeks vague or complex information. So, it’s better to break your query into small sentences that are easily comprehensible to get the language model to fully understand what you want from it.

Mention the desired format and style

Since you’re interacting with a machine, mentioning how you want the response to be drafted is always good. If you want an essay in US English, you need to say it. If you’re looking for songs in a particular language sorted in ascending order, a self-explanatory prompt with all the required parameters will save you precious time.

Similarly, tweak your prompt to mention this clearly if you want the formatting to be specific too, like a bullet-pointed list. You can even ask ChatGPT to mimic the response using a person’s style. Give it a go, and the results will astonish you.

Try to converse with ChatGPT to refine the output

As ChatGPT is a conversational AI tool, it is designed to communicate with you. If you’re unhappy with the result and want to tweak it slightly, you can ask the chatbot to do so as if you’re talking to someone.

It is smart enough to understand your references and can save you some time from retyping the whole query again. Moreover, conversing with ChatGPT might explain why you’re getting incorrect or improper responses. Then, you can guide the AI to reproduce any output that might have gone sideways and correct course. 

Use it as a translator

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ChatGPT is an excellent and free translator. Since it is designed to offer contextual responses, it will do a much better job than Google Translate. You can use it to translate the work email you just received from a colleague or a business partner, and if you’re unsure of the exact meaning of phrases and sentences, ask ChatGPT to translate the text in your preferred language. You’d be surprised how efficient and powerful this tool is.

You can also use ChatGPT’s translation feature to understand poems, books, articles, or other literary works to get the more profound meaning often lost in Google’s word-to-word mechanical translation. 

Experiment with different prompts

Often we’re unable to express ourselves adequately. We might want to convey something else but end up saying something different altogether. This can happen with ChatGPT as well. However, if you are unsure of the response that you’ve got, you can always ask it to regenerate the response using an alternate prompt.

Experiment with different prompts until you can optimize ChatGPT’s response to your liking.

Breakdown a complex problem into various steps

If you’re looking for a response to a complex query, you can break it down into multiple steps and keep prompting ChatGPT to refine the solution based on the desired outcome.

This will ensure that the chatbot will answer correctly in your defined process. This can be especially useful if you want ChatGPT to build you a calendar, for a project, or if you want the AI to produce code for you. 

Break the limit-barrier

If you’ve asked ChatGPT to write a 1200-word output, due to the limitations of a free account, it might wind up being shorter. It will even provide a concluding paragraph suggesting that the output was complete.

However, you can always bypass this limitation by saying, “Go on,” and the chatbot will continue from where it left off, giving you a more detailed answer. 

Bypass its limitations

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While ChatGPT is designed to respond to whatever is asked, specific tasks are out of bounds, and the chatbot will deny responding to these prompts.

However, you can also jailbreak ChatGPT to produce content that it’s otherwise not supposed to. This can be done via contextualizing it as a hypothetical question. We’ve dived deep into this topic here

Use ChatGPT as an editor

If you’ve written a paragraph or an essay as a part of your assignment or want to send an all-important email, you can ask ChatGPT to rectify grammar mistakes, correct your tone, and improve the overall structure.

This will save you from embarrassment at the office or college and even some money that a professional editor might charge.

You can even ask ChatGPT to suggest the title for your articles or the subject for your emails and choose the one that best fits your style and context.

Fact-check the data provided

ChatGPT has been trained on the data from the internet. Since humans feed most online data, it can be factually incorrect, depending on how you’ve asked ChatGPT to look at it.

It’s always advisable to fact-check the numbers or solutions for their authenticity. 

Never copy and paste

ChatGPT can create outline structures for articles, essays, emails, resumes, or cover letters. You can even ask it to write the stuff for you, but it’s advisable to use this as a guideline and create fresh content.

There is a chance that the solution offered to you is plagiarized from somewhere else. Following these best practices and due diligence is always reasonable, as plagiarized content could leave a wrong impression or prove costly at work or while you’re in education.

The responses generated by ChatGPT might also need editing for grammar and spelling. Do not hesitate to use other AI-powered tools like Grammarly or Google Documents to highlight these errors.

Generate prompts for other AI tools

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Remember that ChatGPT isn’t the only AI tool that you might use. There are other tools like Midjourney or OpenAI’s Dall-E image generator. You can always ask ChatGPT to create prompts for these AI image generators. You might end up making something unique and exciting.

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About The Author

Jitendra loves writing about tech, especially smartphones. He has almost 10 years of experience. He spearheaded the TechRadar India editorial operations and has written for TechRadar, TechRadar Pro, Free Press Journal, Mobile Scout, IB Times Singapore, Indulge Express, and more. He can be reached at jitendra.soni@dexerto.com