More than ever, authors can use AI to save time and reduce grunt work. Here’s another goodie that will help non-fiction scribes.

Properly formatting endnotes is cumbersome and, not surprisingly, some authors are downright lazy about it. What’s more, once you figure out the format, the goalposts may move. The Chicago Manual of Style is no monolith. What if there were a way to quickly and professionally churn them out?

Enter AI

Here’s the prompt that I entered into Perplexity:

The result is below:

Racket’s primary editor gave it two thumbs up. Note that this process may not always yield perfect endnotes. I can’t say that I’ve tested hundreds of entries.

Link shortening can pay massive dividends on longer books.

As an aside, I’m a fan of link shortening because it saves space. Case in point: The forthcoming Racket title will contain well over 700 endnotes. (Incidentally, you won’t find any references to robot umpires in it.) Shortened links should shave a good 15 pages off the physical book.

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What You Need to Know

The downsides of an AI-driven world are formidable, but considerable advantages abound as well. In this case, a smart prompt allows writers to spend more time writing interesting content and less time doing manual work.