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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

Fine-tuning a model for a specific tone of voice: what actually transfers

#finetuning #tone #style

Tone is one of the cleaner things fine-tuning can teach, compared to new facts or reasoning skills — it's a consistent, learnable pattern across many examples rather than a one-off piece of knowledge.

What data actually teaches tone

  • A hundred or more examples in the target voice, covering a range of topics — tone that only appears in one narrow context doesn't generalise.
  • Consistency across examples matters more than volume; fifty tightly consistent examples beat five hundred inconsistent ones.
  • Include a few contrast examples if the model previously had a strong default tone to overcome — showing what to move away from, not only what to move toward.

Testing whether it worked

Have someone unfamiliar with the project read outputs blind and guess whether they match the target voice — this catches inconsistency a developer too close to the project might miss.

See fine-tuning dataset formats and chat templates.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour speaking into a microphone on stage at a MeetKats event
Speaking at a MeetKats event

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Taking questions during a session

Pranjul Rathour in a grey suit at Dr. Virendra Swarup Institute of Computer Studies (VSICS), Kanpur
At VSICS, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour in front of an Integral Startup Foundation hackathon backdrop
At an Integral Startup Foundation hackathon

Pranjul Rathour in a checked shirt inside a packed college auditorium
In a packed college auditorium

Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-11.

Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:

Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
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