Justify Your Prompts!

Eduardo Calò; David M. Howcroft; Leo Leppänen; Saad Mahamood; Simon Mille; Patricia Schmidtova; Emiel Van Miltenburg

doi:10.1162/coli.a.620

Justify Your Prompts!

Eduardo Calò, David M. Howcroft, Leo Leppänen, Saad Mahamood, Simon Mille, Patrícia Schmidtová, Emiel van Miltenburg

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Abstract

When you use a large language model (LLM) in your research, you often need to formulate a prompt to elicit some relevant output from the LLM. This step is challenging since (1) LLMs are known to be brittle and their results may vary drastically between different prompts; and (2) for any given task, there are infinitely many possible prompts. Thus we end up with the following problem: If you cannot try out infinitely many prompts, how do you justify your selected prompt? This article discusses different ways in which authors may motivate their choices, and urges authors to consider how their prompting strategy might be justified.

Anthology ID:: 2026.cl-3.12
Volume:: Computational Linguistics, Volume 52, Issue 3 - September 2026
Month:: September
Year:: 2026
Address:: Cambridge, MA
Venue:: CL
SIG:
Publisher:: MIT Press
Note:
Pages:: 1317–1329
Language:
URL:: https://aclanthology.org/2026.cl-3.12/
DOI:: 10.1162/coli.a.620
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):: Eduardo Calò, David M. Howcroft, Leo Leppänen, Saad Mahamood, Simon Mille, Patrícia Schmidtová, and Emiel van Miltenburg. 2026. Justify Your Prompts!. Computational Linguistics, 52(3):1317–1329.
Cite (Informal):: Justify Your Prompts! (Calò et al., CL 2026)
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PDF:: https://aclanthology.org/2026.cl-3.12.pdf

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@article{calo-etal-2026-justify,
    title = "Justify Your Prompts!",
    author = {Cal{\`o}, Eduardo  and
      Howcroft, David M.  and
      Lepp{\"a}nen, Leo  and
      Mahamood, Saad  and
      Mille, Simon  and
      Schmidtov{\'a}, Patr{\'i}cia  and
      van Miltenburg, Emiel},
    journal = "Computational Linguistics",
    volume = "52",
    number = "3",
    month = sep,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Cambridge, MA",
    publisher = "MIT Press",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.cl-3.12/",
    doi = "10.1162/coli.a.620",
    pages = "1317--1329",
    abstract = "When you use a large language model (LLM) in your research, you often need to formulate a prompt to elicit some relevant output from the LLM. This step is challenging since (1) LLMs are known to be brittle and their results may vary drastically between different prompts; and (2) for any given task, there are infinitely many possible prompts. Thus we end up with the following problem: If you cannot try out infinitely many prompts, how do you justify your selected prompt? This article discusses different ways in which authors may motivate their choices, and urges authors to consider how their prompting strategy might be justified."
}

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    <abstract>When you use a large language model (LLM) in your research, you often need to formulate a prompt to elicit some relevant output from the LLM. This step is challenging since (1) LLMs are known to be brittle and their results may vary drastically between different prompts; and (2) for any given task, there are infinitely many possible prompts. Thus we end up with the following problem: If you cannot try out infinitely many prompts, how do you justify your selected prompt? This article discusses different ways in which authors may motivate their choices, and urges authors to consider how their prompting strategy might be justified.</abstract>
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%0 Journal Article
%T Justify Your Prompts!
%A Calò, Eduardo
%A Howcroft, David M.
%A Leppänen, Leo
%A Mahamood, Saad
%A Mille, Simon
%A Schmidtová, Patrícia
%A van Miltenburg, Emiel
%J Computational Linguistics
%D 2026
%8 September
%V 52
%N 3
%I MIT Press
%C Cambridge, MA
%F calo-etal-2026-justify
%X When you use a large language model (LLM) in your research, you often need to formulate a prompt to elicit some relevant output from the LLM. This step is challenging since (1) LLMs are known to be brittle and their results may vary drastically between different prompts; and (2) for any given task, there are infinitely many possible prompts. Thus we end up with the following problem: If you cannot try out infinitely many prompts, how do you justify your selected prompt? This article discusses different ways in which authors may motivate their choices, and urges authors to consider how their prompting strategy might be justified.
%R 10.1162/coli.a.620
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.cl-3.12/
%U https://doi.org/10.1162/coli.a.620
%P 1317-1329

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Markdown (Informal)

[Justify Your Prompts!](https://aclanthology.org/2026.cl-3.12/) (Calò et al., CL 2026)

Justify Your Prompts! (Calò et al., CL 2026)

ACL

Eduardo Calò, David M. Howcroft, Leo Leppänen, Saad Mahamood, Simon Mille, Patrícia Schmidtová, and Emiel van Miltenburg. 2026. Justify Your Prompts!. Computational Linguistics, 52(3):1317–1329.