It is a scalpel where CFG scale is a dial. Word order and repetition already nudge a model's attention, as the prompt entry covers, but that is an inherent bias of how the text is read, not a control you invoke on demand. Weighting syntax is deliberate: mark one term and only that term's pull on the generation moves, up or down, while every other word keeps the influence it already had.
That is what separates it from CFG scale, and the two are routinely reached for interchangeably when they should not be. Raising CFG scale turns up obedience to the entire prompt at once — the words that were already landing get pushed harder along with the one that was not, which is why the fix for one ignored word so often arrives with a burnt, over-contrasted result attached. Weighting only that one word leaves the rest of the sentence exactly where it was.
The syntax itself did not standardise. Parenthetical weights, a trailing colon-and-number, doubled colons — the punctuation differs by provider, and none of it is portable. A model that never implemented the mechanism does not politely ignore the brackets either; it reads them as literal characters, which is how a weighted prompt copied from one tool to another sometimes comes back with stray punctuation rendered into the scene.
In practice
- Reach for weighting on one stubborn word before turning CFG scale up for the whole prompt — the second option fixes one problem by creating several more.
- The syntax is provider-specific; a bracket- or colon-weighted prompt copied to a different model may just render the punctuation as text.
- Extreme weights break the sentence's coherence long before they finish fixing the one word that was being ignored — move in small steps.
The mistake to avoid
Reaching for CFG scale to fix one ignored word. That amplifies obedience to the entire prompt, distorting the parts that were already working; weighting is the tool for changing one word's influence without touching the rest.
Where you will run into it
- Text to Image Generator — One prompt. Every image model. One studio.
- AI Video Generator — Text-to-video, image-to-video, and story-to-video in one place.
Related terms
Prompt
A prompt is the written instruction a generative model reads to decide what to make — the one input almost every model requires.
CFG scale
CFG scale controls how strictly a model obeys your prompt, trading obedience against the model's own sense of what a natural image looks like.
Negative prompt
A negative prompt lists what you do not want in the output, steering the generation away from those terms instead of towards them.
Prompt adherence
Prompt adherence is how faithfully a model does what the prompt actually said, as opposed to producing something attractive in the same neighbourhood.
Seed
A seed is the number that decides the random starting noise for a generation, so the same seed with the same settings reproduces the same output.
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