Controlling Tone and Style

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's AI Prompts journey — lesson 15 of 23.

You've learned to control format and length. Now let's control how the AI sounds. The same information can be delivered in completely different ways depending on the tone and style you request.

Compare these prompts asking the same question:

Explain why exercise is important. Use a formal, professional tone.

Regular physical activity is essential for maintaining cardiovascular health, supporting metabolic function, and reducing the risk of chronic diseases.

Explain why exercise is important. Use a casual, friendly tone like you're talking to a friend.

Honestly, moving your body just makes everything better—you sleep better, stress less, and have more energy to actually enjoy life.

Same topic, completely different feel. You can request tones like professional, casual, enthusiastic, serious, or humorous. You can also specify styles: write like a teacher explaining to a child, write like a news reporter, or write like a poet.

This is powerful when you need content for different audiences. A product description for teenagers sounds different than one for executives. A bedtime story sounds different than a technical summary. By specifying tone and style in your prompt, you get responses that fit your actual context—not just generic AI-speak.

Challenge

Ask the AI to describe why reading books is good, but make it sound like an excited, enthusiastic friend who can barely contain their joy. The response should feel energetic and personal, not like a textbook.

The AI's response must:

Contain an exclamation mark (!) — showing enthusiasm
Contain the word you — speaking directly to the reader like a friend
Less than 50 words.

Cheat sheet

You can control the tone and style of AI responses by specifying how you want the AI to sound in your prompt.

Examples of tones you can request:

professional
casual
enthusiastic
serious
humorous
friendly

You can also specify styles by describing how to write:

write like a teacher explaining to a child
write like a news reporter
write like a poet

Example prompts with different tones:

Explain why exercise is important. Use a formal, professional tone.

Explain why exercise is important. Use a casual, friendly tone like you're talking to a friend.

The same information can be delivered in completely different ways depending on the tone you request. This is useful when creating content for different audiences.