Show, Don't Describe: Examples
Waymark's emails have a voice — warm but unfussy, personal without gushing — and Tessa spends three messages trying to describe it to the model. "Friendly but professional." "Warm, not salesy." "Like a knowledgeable friend, but still a business." Every draft comes back sounding like a hotel chain's newsletter. Then she tries something different: she pastes two real Waymark emails and writes one line — "write it like these." The next draft could have been written by her colleague. This page is about why that works, because once you see the reason, you will reach for it constantly.
The reason sits one chapter back. The model is a pattern machine — it produces text that fits patterns. A description of a tone is not a pattern; it is instructions for reconstructing one, filtered through what "warm but unfussy" happens to mean in the model's learned averages. An example is the pattern, handed over whole: the sentence rhythm, the greeting style, the way prices are mentioned, all of it, nothing lost in translation. Showing beats describing for the same reason a barista learns your order faster from one shown cup than from a paragraph about creaminess.
The Working Dose: One or Two
How many examples? Fewer than instinct suggests. One good example sets the shape. A second confirms what stays constant across instances — the model sees what both share and treats that as the pattern. A pile of ten adds little beyond the second and spends window doing it (the whiteboard from Chapter 1 never stops filling). Tessa's two emails were not a lucky guess; they are the working dose for most tasks.
Choose the examples for quality, not convenience: the model imitates what you show it, so show your best. If the sample email has a clumsy opening, expect clumsy openings back — imitated faithfully, at scale.
Examples Set Format, Not Just Tone
The same move works on structure, and it is even more reliable there. Suppose Tessa wants review summaries as a tidy line: tour name, then rating, then one-phrase verdict. She can describe that — or she can show one filled-in line and say "like this." The shown line wins. The model completes visible patterns more faithfully than it invents structures from descriptions, and the more particular your format, the more the shown version pays.
This is the bridge to the next page, so mark it now: for anything with a shape — tables, lists, fixed templates — show the shape with one filled example. The next page builds a whole practice on this.
Mind What the Example Carries
One honest warning closes the lesson. The model imitates everything in the example — including the parts you did not mean as instructions. Tessa's two sample emails both happened to mention prices; her new draft mentions prices too, though she never asked. The example carried it, and imitation delivered it. This cuts both ways: it is why examples are powerful (they carry more than you could list) and why they need a glance before use (they carry more than you noticed).
The professional habit: skim your examples once, asking "what will this teach?" Strip or swap anything you do not want repeated — a price, an outdated tour name, one guest's personal details (a preview of Chapter 6's stricter rules about what never goes in at all). Then pair the shown pattern with a stated constraint where it matters: "like these, but do not mention prices." Examples and instructions are not rivals; the strongest prompts in this book use both — the example sets the pattern, the instruction trims its edges.
- "If I describe the tone carefully enough, that should work." Descriptions filter through the model's learned averages of your adjectives; examples arrive intact. When tone or shape matters, show it — one pasted sample outteaches three messages of adjectives.
- "More examples always help." After the second, returns fall fast and the window bill grows. One sets the shape, two confirm the constants — curate rather than pile.
- "The model will copy my example's text into the answer." It imitates the pattern — rhythm, structure, tone — and writes new content into it. Tessa's draft was a new email in the old voice, not a collage.
- "Examples replace instructions." They carry the pattern; instructions trim its edges. "Like these, but do not mention prices" — the strongest prompts use both together.
- For anything with a style or a shape — emails, summaries, tables, templates — showing is the single highest-payoff technique in the prompting craft. This is the page to remember when a description keeps failing.
- It reframes what prompting is: not commanding a servant, but supplying patterns to a pattern machine. Get that picture and half the craft becomes obvious.
Knowledge Check
Why did two pasted emails succeed where three messages of description failed?
- The pasted emails made the prompt longer, and longer prompts work better
- An example hands over the pattern whole, while a description must be reconstructed from adjectives
- The model treats pasted text as more important than your typed instructions
- The model recognized the two emails and reused their sentences directly
What is the working dose of examples for most tasks?
- As many as the window will hold — each extra example sharpens the pattern
- One or two — the first sets the shape, the second confirms the constants
- At least five of them, so the model can average out the differences between them
- None — a pasted example competes with your instructions and pulls attention away
Tessa never asked for prices, but her draft mentions them. Why?
- Both of her example emails mentioned prices, and the model imitated that too
- The model decided on its own that mentioning prices would make the email sell better
- Marketing emails always include prices unless you say otherwise
- It remembered the price details from her earlier conversations about this tour
What is the professional habit before using an example in a prompt?
- Rewrite the example from scratch so it is exactly what you want
- Paste it as it is and tell the model to ignore anything irrelevant
- Skim it once for what it will teach, and strip anything you do not want repeated
- Add four or five more examples so that no single one's quirks dominate the pattern
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