The editing options that rewrite a selection are not a fixed list. You can define your own — a short instruction describing how you want text changed — keep it in the menu, and send it to somebody else as a link.
Which turns a general-purpose tool into something that does one specific job the way you want it done.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Write a style that does one job well.
- check_circle Tell a useful instruction from a vague one.
- check_circle Share one with a team.
- check_circle Know which jobs should not be a style.
A style is a saved instruction, sitting alongside the built-in ones in the same menu.
tune Specific beats clever
The instinct when writing one of these is to describe a personality — warm, professional, witty. Those produce the least useful results, because they describe a mood rather than an operation, and what comes back is whatever the machine associates with the word.
Instructions that work say what to do to the text. Keep it under three sentences. Put the request in the first line. Remove pleasantries. Convert it into a numbered list of steps. Each of those has a checkable result, which means you can tell whether the style is working rather than guessing whether it feels right.
The test for a draft instruction is whether two different people applying it to the same message would agree on whether it had been followed. If the answer is no, it is a mood, and it belongs in the built-in options where the vagueness is expected.
Four styles worth having, and one to avoid
The good ones are all repetitive jobs rather than transformations of character.
work The way your team writes announcements
translate A correction you need repeatedly
format_list_numbered Turning prose into a shape
person_off "Make it sound like me"
Encode a job, not a character. Jobs can be checked; characters can only be liked or disliked.
share Sharing one
A style can be handed over as a link, which makes it a small piece of shared tooling rather than a personal setting. For a team that is the whole point: one person works out what the weekly update should look like, everybody installs it, and the format stops being a thing people are reminded about.
Two things are worth saying when you share one. What it is for, since a style with a clever name is unusable by anybody who did not write it. And what it does not do — people install these expecting a general improvement and are disappointed by something built for one narrow job.
Treat an installed style like any other shared tool: applied to your own words before sending, checked, and abandoned when it stops matching what you actually write. A style nobody has reviewed for a year is quietly shaping messages according to a decision made by somebody who has since left.
settings Making one
- Start from the formatting menu Styles sit beside the built-in ones.
- Describe an operation, not a mood Something you can check.
- Test it on a message you actually wrote And disliked.
- Say what to do with what does not fit Otherwise it vanishes.
- Name it for its job when you share it Not cleverly.
- Re-read every result A trusted style is an unchecked one.
This page saves one instruction and shares it. The curriculum step is the same instinct applied to whole workflows: assembling repeatable processes without writing software, and where that approach stops being enough.
At a glance
- 1Custom styles
Write a style that describes one concrete task.
- 2Be specific
'Three sentences, request first' beats 'make it warm'.
- 3Share with a team
Good for house formats, not for copying a voice.
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