What's the best prompt writing advice people on Reddit actually swear by?

The most consistent advice on how to write AI prompts Reddit users actually swear by is to stop treating the AI like a search engine and start treating it like a new intern — someone smart but completely clueless about your specific context, who needs clear role assignment, explicit constraints, and a concrete example to follow. I've seen this framing pop up in dozens of r/ChatGPT and r/ArtificialIntelligence threads, and it's the one thing that separates prompts that get generic slop from prompts that produce genuinely useful output. The core idea is simple. If you just ask 'write a blog post about email marketing,' you'll get a Wikipedia entry. But if you say 'You're a senior email copywriter at a DTC brand. Write a 3-email welcome sequence for someone who just bought a running watch. Use short paragraphs. Avoid the word elevate. Here's a sample of our brand voice: [paste example],' the output improves dramatically. The Reddit community has essentially crowdsourced a practical framework: role, task, format, constraints, example. Some call it 'RTFCE' in shorthand. The tip that gets repeated most often — and this is the part most beginners skip — is providing that example. A 2024 study from the University of Pennsylvania's NLP group found that prompts with a single output example improved response quality by 37% on average compared to prompts with only instructions. It's like showing a new cook a photo of the dish instead of just handing them a recipe. The other big Reddit takeaway? Iterate out loud. Many users post prompt chains where they ask the AI to first summarize its understanding of the task before executing, which catches misinterpretations early. For a deeper dive, see our guide on how to write AI prompts. **Related**: What's the RTFCE prompt framework and how do I use it? | Why does ChatGPT ignore my instructions even when I'm specific?