Shallow patterns

Seven ways a rewritten prompt looks more expert without being more expert. Each of the four questions in deeper exists to catch at least one of them.

Vocabulary without method

“Act as an expert typographer” followed by the same steps you’d have taken anyway. The words changed. The method didn’t.

Deeper: name the instrument the expert uses, such as a page canon, a baseline grid or a preflight check.

The digest instead of the source

The prompt works from your description of the problem rather than the thing itself. “Tell me your current margins” instead of “send the print PDF and the printer’s spec.”

Deeper: ask for the raw material, and say where it lives.

A nicer table

Prose or a Markdown table where the work calls for a database, a script or a statistical test. It looks organised, and it can’t be checked.

Deeper: use the tool a professional would reach for, even if it’s harder to set up.

Grading its own homework

“Review your answer and confirm it’s correct.” The model checks the model.

Deeper: a check outside both you and the model. A test suite, a measurement, a printed proof, a real user.

A check with no fail

“Make sure it reads well.” There’s a check, but no result that would count as failing it.

Deeper: state the pass mark and the fail. “Zero widows. Preflight clean. Any one failing is a fail.”

Bigger, not deeper

The rewrite adds features, deliverables or side quests. A caption becomes a content strategy.

Deeper: keep the scope. Higher standard, same job. deeper 1.0 slipped here, adding an A/B test to a caption. Since 1.1 the prompt asks for the same deliverables as the task, and anything extra goes on a “Worth knowing” line for you to choose.

Taking the belief as given

The prompt builds on what you think is true: “the inner margins are too large.” Nobody checks it.

Deeper: name one belief the raw material could disprove, then test it first. A thick spine eats the gutter, so a wide inner margin may be correct.