{"course":{"slug":"ai-for-teachers","title":"AI for Teachers","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers","level":"beginner","track":"work"},"lesson":{"slug":"prompting-for-formats-you-can-print","title":"Prompting for formats you can print","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/prompting-for-formats-you-can-print","position":14,"of":57,"minutes":8,"answer":"The model writes in markdown by default, which turns into stray asterisks and hashes when pasted into Word or WhatsApp, so name the destination and ask for plain text, a numbered list.","keyIdea":"The model writes in markdown by default, which turns into stray asterisks and hashes when pasted into Word or WhatsApp, so name the destination and ask for plain text, a numbered list, or CSV: whichever survives the paste."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## The hidden language in every answer\n\nChatbot answers look formatted: headings, bold, bullet points, tables. Underneath, the model is writing markdown: a plain-text convention where `## ` starts a heading, `**word**` makes bold, `- ` starts a bullet. The chat window renders those symbols into formatting. Word, Google Docs, WhatsApp and a printed page do not. Paste the raw text and the symbols come with it.\n\nEvery teacher meets this in the first week and assumes something is broken. Nothing is. You need to tell the model where the text is going.\n\n## Say the destination\n\n- **\"Plain text, no markdown, for pasting into Word.\"** No symbols. Headings as capitalised lines, bold dropped, bullets as dashes or numbers. This is the safe default for anything you will paste into a document.\n- **\"For WhatsApp.\"** WhatsApp has its own conventions (a single asterisk for bold, an underscore for italic) and the model knows them if you name the app. Also implies short, and no headings.\n- **\"As a numbered list, one item per line, nothing else.\"** For anything you will cut up: questions, comments, vocabulary. The \"nothing else\" removes the introduction and the closing remark that every answer otherwise carries.\n- **\"As CSV with these columns: question, answer, marks.\"** For anything going into a spreadsheet. Paste into a text file, save as `.csv`, open in Google Sheets, Excel or LibreOffice Calc. A question bank built this way sorts and filters.\n- **\"As a table.\"** Fine if it stays in the chat or goes into a markdown-aware tool. Poor for Word. If you need a table in a document, ask for CSV and let the spreadsheet make it.\n\n## Where markdown is welcome\n\nSome destinations do render it: Google Docs has a markdown import option, Notion and Obsidian render it natively, and many school learning platforms accept it. If you write your own materials in one of those, keep the markdown and skip the conversion. The choice is about where the text lands, not about the model.\n\n## Getting a printable page\n\nA worksheet needs more than clean text: space to write, a name line, consistent numbering, a page that does not break mid-question. The model cannot see the page, so ask for the elements and lay them out yourself:\n\n> Give me the worksheet as plain text. Number every question. After each question write [3 lines] where students should write. Put \"Name: ________ Class: ______\" at the top. No introduction, no closing remark.\n\nPaste into a document, replace [3 lines] with real space, and print. This takes under two minutes and produces something that looks like it was made rather than pasted.\n\nFor anything more designed (a poster, a card sort, a game board) the model produces the content and a free layout tool produces the page: Canva's free tier, Google Slides, or LibreOffice Draw. Do not ask the model to design the page. It cannot see it.\n\n## Stripping symbols you already have\n\nIf you have pasted markdown into a document and it is full of symbols, do not retype. Paste it first into a free online markdown-to-text converter, or into a plain text editor and use find-and-replace: replace `**` with nothing, replace `## ` with nothing. Thirty seconds.\n\n## Two format instructions that save a lot of editing\n\n**\"Do not restate the question in the answer.\"** Models pad by repeating the prompt. For an answer key that habit doubles the length.\n\n**\"No preamble, no summary.\"** Removes the `Certainly! Here is your worksheet on fractions` at the top and the `I hope this helps your students!` at the bottom, both of which you would otherwise delete forty times a term.\n\n## The honest limit\n\nFormat instructions are followed well for the first output and drift on the tenth, for the same reason register drifts: the constraint is at the top and the recent messages are closer. If a long session starts returning markdown again, restate the format in the request. And there is one format the model cannot reliably produce: precise character-level layout: aligned columns in plain text, boxes drawn from dashes and pipes. It approximates, and the approximation breaks when the font changes. For that, use the spreadsheet or the document tool. They were built for it; the model was not."},"check":{"question":"A teacher copies a generated worksheet into a Word document and finds lines beginning with ## and words wrapped in **. What is the cause and the right fix?","options":[{"text":"The model made formatting errors in its output and should be asked to proofread more carefully before it sends the next version.","correct":false,"tempting":"Not an error; the markup is the model's normal formatting language, rendered correctly in the chat and only exposed when pasted somewhere that does not render it."},{"text":"The output is markdown, which the chat renders and Word does not; ask for plain text.","correct":true},{"text":"Word is the wrong destination for generated material, which should be printed directly from the chat window to avoid the problem.","correct":false,"tempting":"Printing from the chat is possible but loses the ability to edit, and the underlying issue, knowing what format the model emits, would remain for every other destination."},{"text":"The teacher's copy-and-paste operation added the symbols, and using a different browser would remove them from the text.","correct":false,"tempting":"The symbols are in the source text the model produced; no browser adds or removes them."}]},"prev":{"slug":"roles-that-help-and-roles-that-dont","title":"Roles that help, and roles that do nothing","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/roles-that-help-and-roles-that-dont"},"next":{"slug":"when-it-refuses-a-lesson","title":"When it refuses a lesson","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/when-it-refuses-a-lesson"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'Prompting for formats you can print', in AI for Teachers. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/prompting-for-formats-you-can-print (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"Prompting for formats you can print","courseTitle":"AI for Teachers","module":{"index":2,"slug":"prompting-as-a-teacher","title":"Prompting as a teacher"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"The model writes in markdown by default, which turns into stray asterisks and hashes when pasted into Word or WhatsApp, so name the destination and ask for plain text, a numbered list, or CSV: whichever survives the paste.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"the-hidden-language-in-every-answer","runs":[{"text":"The hidden language in every answer"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Chatbot answers look formatted: headings, bold, bullet points, tables. Underneath, the model is writing markdown: a plain-text convention where "},{"text":"## ","code":true},{"text":" starts a heading, "},{"text":"**word**","code":true},{"text":" makes bold, "},{"text":"- ","code":true},{"text":" starts a bullet. The chat window renders those symbols into formatting. Word, Google Docs, WhatsApp and a printed page do not. Paste the raw text and the symbols come with it."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Every teacher meets this in the first week and assumes something is broken. Nothing is. You need to tell the model where the text is going."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"say-the-destination","runs":[{"text":"Say the destination"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"”Plain text, no markdown, for pasting into Word.”","b":true},{"text":" No symbols. Headings as capitalised lines, bold dropped, bullets as dashes or numbers. This is the safe default for anything you will paste into a document."}],[{"text":"”For WhatsApp.”","b":true},{"text":" WhatsApp has its own conventions (a single asterisk for bold, an underscore for italic) and the model knows them if you name the app. Also implies short, and no headings."}],[{"text":"”As a numbered list, one item per line, nothing else.”","b":true},{"text":" For anything you will cut up: questions, comments, vocabulary. The “nothing else” removes the introduction and the closing remark that every answer otherwise carries."}],[{"text":"”As CSV with these columns: question, answer, marks.”","b":true},{"text":" For anything going into a spreadsheet. Paste into a text file, save as "},{"text":".csv","code":true},{"text":", open in Google Sheets, Excel or LibreOffice Calc. A question bank built this way sorts and filters."}],[{"text":"”As a table.”","b":true},{"text":" Fine if it stays in the chat or goes into a markdown-aware tool. Poor for Word. If you need a table in a document, ask for CSV and let the spreadsheet make it."}]]},{"t":"h2","id":"where-markdown-is-welcome","runs":[{"text":"Where markdown is welcome"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Some destinations do render it: Google Docs has a markdown import option, Notion and Obsidian render it natively, and many school learning platforms accept it. If you write your own materials in one of those, keep the markdown and skip the conversion. The choice is about where the text lands, not about the model."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"getting-a-printable-page","runs":[{"text":"Getting a printable page"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A worksheet needs more than clean text: space to write, a name line, consistent numbering, a page that does not break mid-question. The model cannot see the page, so ask for the elements and lay them out yourself:"}]},{"t":"quote","runs":[{"text":"Give me the worksheet as plain text. Number every question. After each question write [3 lines] where students should write. Put “Name: ________ Class: ______” at the top. No introduction, no closing remark."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Paste into a document, replace [3 lines] with real space, and print. This takes under two minutes and produces something that looks like it was made rather than pasted."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"For anything more designed (a poster, a card sort, a game board) the model produces the content and a free layout tool produces the page: Canva’s free tier, Google Slides, or LibreOffice Draw. Do not ask the model to design the page. It cannot see it."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"stripping-symbols-you-already-have","runs":[{"text":"Stripping symbols you already have"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"If you have pasted markdown into a document and it is full of symbols, do not retype. Paste it first into a free online markdown-to-text converter, or into a plain text editor and use find-and-replace: replace "},{"text":"**","code":true},{"text":" with nothing, replace "},{"text":"## ","code":true},{"text":" with nothing. Thirty seconds."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"two-format-instructions-that-save-a-lot-of-editing","runs":[{"text":"Two format instructions that save a lot of editing"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"”Do not restate the question in the answer.”","b":true},{"text":" Models pad by repeating the prompt. For an answer key that habit doubles the length."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"”No preamble, no summary.”","b":true},{"text":" Removes the "},{"text":"Certainly! Here is your worksheet on fractions","code":true},{"text":" at the top and the "},{"text":"I hope this helps your students!","code":true},{"text":" at the bottom, both of which you would otherwise delete forty times a term."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-honest-limit","runs":[{"text":"The honest limit"}],"role":"limit"},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Format instructions are followed well for the first output and drift on the tenth, for the same reason register drifts: the constraint is at the top and the recent messages are closer. If a long session starts returning markdown again, restate the format in the request. And there is one format the model cannot reliably produce: precise character-level layout: aligned columns in plain text, boxes drawn from dashes and pipes. It approximates, and the approximation breaks when the font changes. For that, use the spreadsheet or the document tool. They were built for it; the model was not."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"A teacher copies a generated worksheet into a Word document and finds lines beginning with ## and words wrapped in **. What is the cause and the right fix?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"The model made formatting errors in its output and should be asked to proofread more carefully before it sends the next version."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Not an error; the markup is the model’s normal formatting language, rendered correctly in the chat and only exposed when pasted somewhere that does not render it."}]},{"text":[{"text":"The output is markdown, which the chat renders and Word does not; ask for plain text."}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"Word is the wrong destination for generated material, which should be printed directly from the chat window to avoid the problem."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Printing from the chat is possible but loses the ability to edit, and the underlying issue, knowing what format the model emits, would remain for every other destination."}]},{"text":[{"text":"The teacher’s copy-and-paste operation added the symbols, and using a different browser would remove them from the text."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"The symbols are in the source text the model produced; no browser adds or removes them."}]}],"order":[3,2,1,0],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"roles-that-help-and-roles-that-dont","title":"Roles that help, and roles that do nothing","minutes":8},"next":{"slug":"when-it-refuses-a-lesson","title":"When it refuses a lesson","minutes":8}}}