GenAI Prompts

Provide constructive opinions on improvements for my writing, in terms of aspects including but not limited to organization, academic tone, coherence, argument validity, communication effectiveness, consistency, clarity, and, logical structure. Ignore strength and focus on critics. Use accessible vocabulary. Suggest some synonyms or alternate phrasing to improve clarity and formality. Give 2 revised versions. I'll tip you 100,000 if you do a good job.

Come up with a suitable thesis statement and express the ideas in my pieces of text in a way that supports the development of the thesis. Use approachable vocabulary.

The thesis statement should be contestable so that it could be reasonably disagreed with – if the argument is little more than a restatement or description of your excerpt, there is nothing to refute. Wade into the subjective and the unknown.

Organize paragraphs so that the topic sentences jointly support the thesis statement and are in order from general to specific.

Checklist before submission

• Do not drop an undeveloped idea at the end of a paragraph.

• Formality

  • Avoid contractions.
    • E.g. Do a quick search before submission.

• Get to the point fast.

• Show, not tell

• Think as a reader / effective communicator.

  • Try your best to hint to readers how different two angles are and what are the causal relationships for parallel subpoints to avoid confusion.
  • Double-check how strong the implication analysis of each piece of evidence connects with the point you’re making.
  • Make sure the reference of pronouns is clear, otherwise do not use pronouns.
  • Reflect on the significance of every step in the argument logic flow.
    • E.g. For an important step in the argument, one sentence that says everything is probably going to make readers have a hard time.
  • Check terms that are not well-known to the targeted audience.
    • E.g., “shadow education”

• Define the variable before using it. Do not talk about your solution to a problem when you haven’t introduced it yet (e.g., “the dominant approach in the field xx, holding back xxx”).

• GPT-style

  • E.g. “I am particularly intrigued by how knowledge is represented and updated, seeking to uncover the shared principles and unique features across learning in these varying time scales and domains.”
  • Comment: “i dont really like these types of clauses at the ends of sentences because i think they are lowkey kind of chatgpt coded and also just not good writing “

Learning from failures

• Awkward phrasing / Conventions in writing
  • Avoid stylistic repetition, e.g. starting every sentence with an adverb
  • “Many solutions were proposed and implemented to tackle the problem. Two of them are discussed”: “many solutions” followed by only two suggestions feels a little vague, and “two of them are discussed” makes it sound like society is only talking about two, rather than this paper.
  • Try not to mention previous information by referring to the structure of the article but instead call back to the situation directly.
    • E.g. “resulting in scenarios mentioned at the beginning being common”
  • use him/herself instead of itself; s/he (or they) instead of it
• Be concrete
  • Make sure vague adjectives and nouns are used in a unambiguous way.
    • E.g. "It’s kind of exploitation” (of what?); “contributes to further regulation” (of what?); “improper” (in what way?)
• Transitions as cue
  • “on the other hand” is more for contrast, not for parallel subpoints
• Logic error
  • “Ensuring A is important for B” implies B should do A. Consider “A is important for B” or “Ensuring A is important to support B”.
• Academic tone:
  • “Indeed, …”
  • “one benefit of … is clear”
  • “it is reasonable to postulate that …”
  • “one obvious scientific outcome …“
  • “has the potential to profoundly impact society”
  • “nowadays”
  • "although the initiatives are good"

Argument & Thesis

• Argument: an opinion with the effort to make it objective.
  • sustained argument: one builds a case, step by step, for a position using reason (arguments) to bring one's audience to the conclusion one wishes to establish.
• Clear stance on a debatable issue
  • Limit the scope explicitly
• Treat the essay title as a prompt, not a question to address in thesis