Giving Friendly, Clear Instructions
You have learned that computers need instructions, that order matters, and that clear words work better than vague ones. Now it is time to put all of that together! Today you will learn how to write instructions that are friendly and clear — so clear that any computer could follow them without any confusion at all.
The Recipe for a Great Instruction
A great instruction has four ingredients: 1. A clear action. Use a strong verb — a doing word. Draw, write, move, change, open, add, remove. 2. A clear object. Say exactly what the action applies to. Not 'the thing' — say 'the blue circle,' 'the title,' 'the second paragraph.' 3. Helpful details. Add the information the computer needs: colors, sizes, positions, numbers. 4. A friendly tone. Even though computers do not have feelings, being clear and specific is itself a kind of friendliness — you are making it easy for the computer to help you well. Let's see this in action: Weak: 'Change the text.' Strong: 'Change the word Hello in the title to the word Welcome, keeping the same size and color.' The strong version has all four ingredients!
A great instruction has a clear action, a clear object, helpful details, and nothing left to guess. You are making it easy for the computer to do its job well.
Let's practice improving instructions together. Original: 'Put a star somewhere.' Improved: 'Place a gold five-pointed star in the top-left corner of the screen, about the size of a postage stamp.' Original: 'Write a story about a dog.' Improved: 'Write a short three-paragraph story about a small brown dog named Biscuit who learns to swim for the first time.' Notice how the improved versions answer questions before they are even asked: Where? What color? How big? How long? What is the dog's name? Every answered question is one less thing the computer has to guess.
Prompt Challenge
Ask an AI helper to write a short poem about your favorite season.
Your prompt should…
- Name the season you want the poem to be about
- Say how long the poem should be (number of lines or stanzas)
- Include one special detail you want mentioned in the poem
Writing great instructions is a skill. The more you practice, the better you get. And here is the exciting part: this skill works for talking to AI helpers, for coding, for giving directions, and even for working with other people! When you can explain what you want clearly, the world becomes much easier to work in. People and computers alike will be able to help you much more.
After writing an instruction, read it back to yourself. Pretend you are a computer seeing it for the first time. Is everything clear? Could you follow it with no extra clues?
Which instruction is the strongest and clearest?
What is one good way to check if your instruction is clear?
Instruction Improvement Workshop
- Write down five weak instructions on a piece of paper. Use these starter examples or make up your own:
- 'Fix the drawing.'
- 'Make the music louder.'
- 'Add something to the story.'
- 'Move it to the right.'
- 'Change the color.'
- For each weak instruction, write an improved version with a clear action, clear object, and helpful details.
- Share your improvements with a partner. Whose improved version is the clearest?
- Pick your favorite improved instruction and act it out — one person gives the instruction, the other follows it exactly!