AI engineering glossary · Prompt context engineering
What is markdown formatting in prompts?
Markdown formatting in prompts: Using headings, bullet lists and code fences inside a prompt to organise long instructions, and asking for Markdown in the reply. Clean structure helps both the model and human reviewers. Some applications need plain text instead, so the format should be stated clearly.
Markdown formatting in prompts: an example
A prompt has sections '## Task', '## Rules' and '## Input', and asks the reply to use a numbered list.
Related terms
More Prompt context engineering terms
- Max tokens
- Message roles
- Meta-prompting
- Multi-turn conversation
- Needle in a haystack test
- One-shot prompting
- Outlines library
- Output format specification
Where you learn it
Markdown formatting in prompts is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.