Rather than imagining “prompt engineering” as a new form of writing that appeared *ex nihilo* three years ago, I find it helpful to think about the ways this new kind of writing remixes existing forms of writing. For example, the primary goal of prompt engineering is getting a model to behave in a specific way. We do that by providing it with very clear, unambiguous instructions. There’s a clear connection to technical writing here. Some prompt engineering frameworks claim that adding phrases like “my job depends on it!” to a prompt can improve the quality of responses, so there’s likely an opportunity to draw in aspects of persuasive writing as well. &c. And of course there are the interesting differences between prompt writing and technical or persuasive writing, such as the difference in audience (when you write a prompt, your audience is an LLM). But it’s still the case that knowing something about your audience and how they think (in this case, knowing something about how LLMs work under the hood) can make you a more effective writer.
The key point is to understand that when we started writing prompts for LLMs we started by *writing* – bringing to bear the skills and techniques we already had at our disposal. This realization can connect our work writing prompts to a wider body of knowledge and experience.
I firmly believe that, in addition to technical writing, persuasive writing, expository writing, &c., that we will eventually teach university-level classes on prompt writing. And many of them will be in the English department, and will make these explicit connections between prompt writing and other forms of writing. Prompt writing is undeniably the most economically valuable form of writing one can learn to do.