“Please choose the heading by Thursday” is a useful opening for a collaborator choosing the sign’s heading. For someone who has never heard of the project, it skips the whole story. In this hypothetical example, a neighborhood postcard display needs two explanations drawn from one short note.

Copy-ready two-reader prompt

Rewrite the source below for two readers.

Version 1: A first-time reader deciding whether to participate. Explain what the activity is and what they would do. Omit internal coordination details.

Version 2: A collaborator helping prepare the activity. Lead with the pending decision, its options, the deadline, and who needs the answer. Include the activity details needed to make the sign.

Use only facts in the source. Preserve names, dates, options, and practical limits wherever relevant. Do not resolve the pending decision or add logistics. Keep each version under 90 words. Return both versions, followed by a short note explaining what you omitted from each and why.

Source:
We’re making a postcard wall for Saturday’s neighborhood gathering. Each visitor can write one sentence about a favorite local place on a blank postcard and clip it to a string. We’ll provide cards, pencils, and clips. Contributions stay at the gathering; we aren’t collecting addresses or mailing anything. Maya is making the instruction sign. She needs us to choose its heading by Thursday: “Places We Love” or “Our Neighborhood, One Sentence.”

The source and two ready-to-use versions

Source: We’re making a postcard wall for Saturday’s neighborhood gathering. Each visitor can write one sentence about a favorite local place on a blank postcard and clip it to a string. We’ll provide cards, pencils, and clips. Contributions stay at the gathering; we aren’t collecting addresses or mailing anything. Maya is making the instruction sign. She needs us to choose its heading by Thursday: “Places We Love” or “Our Neighborhood, One Sentence.”

For a first-time reader: At Saturday’s neighborhood gathering, you can help make a postcard wall. Write one sentence about a favorite local place on a blank postcard, then clip it to a string. Cards, pencils, and clips will be provided. The postcards stay at the gathering—nothing gets mailed, and no addresses are collected.

For a collaborator: Please choose the instruction-sign heading by Thursday so Maya can make the sign: “Places We Love” or “Our Neighborhood, One Sentence.” The sign needs to explain the activity for Saturday’s neighborhood gathering: write one sentence about a favorite local place on a provided postcard, then clip it to a string. Cards, pencils, and clips are provided. Cards stay at the gathering; no mailing or address collection.

Change the entry point, keep the facts

The newcomer’s first question is likely to be, “What would I do there?” That version starts with the gathering, names the display, and walks through the physical action. You can picture a pencil, a card, and a line of contributions. The heading decision disappears because visitors don’t need it to participate.

The collaborator already has work to do. Their version puts the choice and deadline first, followed by the person waiting on that choice. It retains the activity details because those details belong on the sign.

Both versions preserve the mailing clarification. “Postcard” can suggest a destination and a stamp; the source explicitly rules those out. Removing that sentence merely to make the copy shorter would leave a practical question unanswered.

Give AI a reader’s job

“Make this friendlier” leaves the important editorial decision unspecified. A more useful request names what each reader needs to understand or do. The copy-ready prompt below supplies those jobs and a boundary around the source.

These versions are editorial examples, not reported model outputs. If you use the prompt, check especially for attractive additions: a suggested arrival time, a promise that the display will be photographed, or instructions to bring your own postcard. None appears in the source.

Then check the collaborator’s opening. It should still contain both heading options and Thursday. A polished paragraph that hides the pending choice has missed its reader.