AI Dictionary › Prompting
Role prompting means assigning the model an explicit role or persona, an expert, a professional, a character, to steer its tone, vocabulary and perspective. Telling the model "who it is" activates knowledge and styles consistent with that role. Example prompt: "You are an employment lawyer with 20 years of experience. A client asks whether they can dismiss an employee on sick leave. Answer professionally, citing the relevant principles and risks." Assigning the lawyer role yields a more technical, cautious, structured answer than a generic role-free request.
Use it to calibrate the register and expertise of the output: consulting, specialist writing, simulations. Combine it with context and goal for stronger prompts. Note: the role improves tone and form, but does not make the model truly competent on facts it lacks, verification remains necessary.
Open the prompt by assigning who the model is: profession, seniority, point of view, even what it does NOT do. The role selects vocabulary, priorities and the level of the answer more efficiently than a paragraph of instructions.
"You are a senior employment lawyer advising small companies; you flag risks plainly and never guarantee outcomes. Review this dismissal letter for legal exposure."
Almost always: it is the cheapest quality lever that exists. Be specific: "expert" adds little; "pediatric nurse explaining to a worried parent" changes everything. Pair it with the audience for maximum effect.
Multi-turn prompting · JSON mode · Prompt scaffolding · Contrastive prompting · Context stuffing · Retry with backoff · Self-ask · Chain-of-thought · Prompt injection · Temperature · System prompt
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