Want to make your AI writing tools truly reflect your voice? Instead of relying on generic presets like “formal” or “casual,” you can create your own writing style prompts tailored to the exact tone, vocabulary, and structure you prefer. This step-by-step guide shows how to feed an AI system several examples of your writing and generate a reusable prompt you can save and use again for consistent, personalized output for different needs, whether you’re drafting emails, reports, blog posts, or professional documents.
This is a better and more flexible option than relying on preset AI styles like “formal” or “casual” Create your own writing style prompt. Then you can use that prompt in future rewriting requests.
Starting off with AI and (re)writing? Check out AI Writing & Rewriting Made Easy: How Anyone Can Get Better Text with Modern AI
More than one writing style
Most people have several writing styles, even if we’re not conscious of it. We all write differently for personal messages versus work. Even at work there can be different styles, for example, a memo to senior management vs letter to client vs legal submission etc.
To handle that, make your own collection of writing style prompts to suit different needs in your job or personal life.
Use this trick to copy speed up your own writing or copy someone else’s writing style. In an organization, there can be a “house style” or a style that bosses prefer.
Creating a writing style prompt for AI isn’t hard because an AI system can help make a prompt that you can reuse when needed.
Prompt to try
Here’s a prompt you can use with ChatGPT, Copilot or other AI to make your own writing style prompt. It will give you a summary of the analysis under the headings plus a prompt to use in future requests.
Give at least three writing examples, add a few more if you like.
Prompt:
“I am going to provide you with examples of my writing. Please analyze them for the following elements:
Tone & Voice: (e.g., formal, casual, witty, dry, enthusiastic)
Vocabulary: (e.g., complex words, slang, industry jargon, simple language)
Sentence Structure: (e.g., short & punchy, long & flowing, heavy use of bullets)
Formatting quirks: (e.g., use of emojis, specific capitalization, signature sign-offs)
Goal: Create a concise ‘Style Guide’ paragraph that I can paste into future prompts so you can write exactly like this.
Example 1: [Paste text here]
Example 2: [Paste text here]
Example 3: [Paste text here]“
Part of the ChatGPT response to the above prompt:
How to get the best result
- Try several times with different examples to get a writing style prompt you like.
- Use any extended or longer thinking option, if available.
- Provide 3–10 samples (even 300–600 words total can be enough; more is better if the style is subtle). Keep in mind the overall prompt size limit (around 4k characters)
- What’s the purpose? (blog posts, headlines, product blurbs, scripts, etc.).
- Specify limits such as length, reading level, SEO needs, banned phrases, formatting rules.
- Ask for three outputs:
- A style analysis (what it inferred).
- A style guide (rules you can keep).
- A prompt template top copy for future use.
- The AI created prompt can and usually is edited before regular use.
- Make your own collection of style prompts to suit different situations or readers.
This is also more flexible than an AI preset writing style. Various AI systems are promising a ‘default, customized writing style’ which sounds great except that most people use different styles depending on the situation and audience. Sometime in the future we’ll get selectable custom styles.
Pros and Cons of AI made writing styles.
Like most things with AI, it can do a good job but not as good as the marketing hype.
There are practical limits, AI can infer and reproduce a “house style” from examples, and it can also generate a reusable prompt template (and a style guide) that you can paste into future chats.
What AI can do well
- Mimic voice and tone: formality, humor/dryness, punchiness, warmth, cynicism, etc.
- Match structure: paragraph lengths, headings, use of bullets, rhythm, typical openings/closings.
- Adopt recurring preferences: e.g., short sentences, rhetorical questions, parentheticals, analogies, UK vs US spelling, etc.
- Create a “style spec”: a short set of rules that define the style, plus “do/don’t” examples.
What AI cannot do reliably
- Perfectly clone an author in every nuance (especially with very few samples).
- Guarantee consistency if the prompt is vague or if new content types stretch the style (e.g., turning review-writing samples into legal drafting).
- Replicate copyrighted text verbatim at scale (it can emulate style, not reproduce large passages).
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