Models can be so sensitive that even prompting "Number section headings" would cause it to stop using its normal bullet point formatting anywhere. But then adding some variant of "...but don't stop using bullets as you normally do when they are needed" would make it start using bullets all the time.

Trying to craft a workable prompt got so frustrating I eventually just tried a prompt of "Don't change anything about your normal text formatting, it's perfect as is" and even that skewed the output vs no prompt. For browser chat I finally just wrote a client-side CSS UserStyle that does the formatting. Now I even have sequentially numbered sections with indented alphabetic bullets! Zero cognitive load or attentional skew and it never drifts off the formatting in long sessions.

[flagged]