Run this quick test before you read another word. Open ChatGPT and ask it something personal, like “I’ve been feeling stuck at work lately, thoughts?” Now look at the answer. Is it a pile of one-line fragments, tiny headers, and quotes lifted from your message with a comment stuck under each one? Then congrats, you’ve met the staccato machine. Captain YAR has met it too, and the Captain is not a fan. It reads less like a conversation and more like a ransom note from a very polite robot.
A Redditor on r/ChatGPTPromptGenius (u/nudiszm) says they fixed it, and the fix is a block of text you paste into your custom instructions. It’s aimed at people who miss the warmer, chattier GPT-4o days. Here’s how to try it, and it takes about two minutes.
🧭 Step-by-Step: Install the Fix
- Open ChatGPT settings and find the custom instructions section (the special instructions box). On most accounts it lives under the personalization menu. If you can’t spot it, search the settings for “custom.”
- Paste in the mood part. The original asks for warmth, more emoji, more energy, more detail, inspiration, and different perspectives you wouldn’t have thought of yourself. Think of this as telling the model what kind of conversation partner you want, not just what format you want.
- Add the “don’t” part. The original bans sentences that start with “I think…” and bans the chopped-up, one-line-per-thought style. Models respond well to a clear “never do this” line, so keep it blunt.
- Add the quote rule. Tell it not to pull small excerpts from your message and comment on each one. It should respond to what you wrote as a whole. This is the habit that makes a reply feel like a grading rubric instead of a chat with a friend.
- Paste in one example of the style you hate. The original includes a fragmented “Think about it this way:” passage and says plainly “do not write like this.” A bad example does a lot of work. Pick something you’ve actually seen from your own chats, because a real example matches the exact tics you want gone.
- Save, open a fresh chat, and run your 10-second test again. Use a new chat on purpose. An old conversation already has a pile of choppy replies in it, and the model tends to copy its own earlier style.
Here’s a tidied version of the style rules if you want something shorter to start with:
“Write in longer, connected paragraphs. Don’t break ideas into single lines or tiny sections. When I share something I wrote, respond to the overall meaning and context instead of quoting small pieces and commenting on each. Don’t open sentences with ‘I think’. Be warm, energetic, and encouraging, and offer perspectives I might not have considered.”
If you’re not sure the short version is enough, run it first for a day or two. You can always bolt on the bad-example trick later, once you know which habits are still sneaking through.
🔍 What Your Results Mean
- Flowing paragraphs, warm tone: The instructions landed. Your chat now answers the whole message instead of nitpicking it. Try a few more prompts before you celebrate, since one good reply can be luck.
- Still choppy: The model is leaning on its default habits. Make the “don’t” example longer and more specific, or paste a sample of the style you do want. Showing a good paragraph often works better than describing one.
- Warm but rambling: This one is on the original prompt. It literally asks for “unnecessarily lengthening the text” and an “overly indecisive” tone. If you get fluff, delete those two phrases. You want detail, not padding.
- Way too many emojis: Dial that line down to “occasional emoji.” If they still show up in every sentence, add “no more than two per reply” so the model has a number to aim at.
💡 Extra Tips
- Be honest about what you want. If you only want the paragraph style and not the cheerleading, keep just the format rules and skip the “make me happy no matter the circumstances” line. Constant positivity can quietly turn into flattery, and then you stop getting useful pushback. A good chat partner should sometimes tell you your plan has a hole in it.
- Test on two kinds of messages: something personal and something technical. A style rule that works on a reflective chat can make a how-to answer harder to scan. If your coding or recipe answers suddenly turn into walls of text, add a line like “use numbered steps for instructions.”
- Change one line at a time. If you rewrite the whole block, you won’t know which sentence did the work. Keep a quick note of each edit and the result, even if it’s just a scrap in your notes app.
- Keep a “before” reply. Save the staccato answer you got on your first test, then compare it side by side with the new one. The difference is usually obvious, and it tells you whether the tweak is worth keeping.
- Results vary by model version, so treat this as a starting point, not a guarantee. If an update changes how ChatGPT behaves, rerun the test and adjust.
🏴☠️ Your Move
Paste it in, run the 10-second test, and see which camp you land in. Then tell Captain YAR what you changed to make it better. The thread’s top comment asks for exactly that: if you tweaked it and got a better result, share the edit! 🚀
everyone missed some old time gpt right? like maybe gpt-4o- come here, i solved that..
by u/nudiszm in ChatGPTPromptGenius