The four-part prompt: role, task, context, format

The concept

Write the four parts as four lines, in this order. ROLE: who it should answer as. TASK: the single thing you want done, as an instruction, not a wish. CONTEXT: the facts, pasted, not referred to. FORMAT: the exact shape of the answer — "a table with three columns", "five bullets, no more than twelve words each".

FORMAT is the part everybody skips and the part that saves the most time. An answer you have to restructure by hand was not really an answer. Ask for the shape you are going to use: if it is going into a slide, ask for slide bullets; if it is going into a spreadsheet, ask for rows.

Here is the same request done both ways — first as people usually write it, then in four parts:

The second prompt is not longer because long is good. It is longer because it contains four things the model cannot guess, and the guess is where the useless answer came from.

Weak:  tell me about data analyst jobs

Strong:
ROLE:    A hiring manager for entry-level analytics roles in India.
TASK:    List what you screen for in a fresher's first 30 seconds.
CONTEXT: I am a 2026 B.Com graduate with Excel, basic SQL and one
         dashboard project. No internship yet.
FORMAT:  A table: skill | what a fresher shows | what most get wrong.
         Five rows maximum. No introduction.