mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Prompt-and-Rerank: A Method for Zero-Shot and Few-Shot Arbitrary Textual Style Transfer with Small Language Models

arXiv 2205.11503 ↗First posted 23 May 2022cs.CLcited by 49

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Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a method for arbitrary textual style transfer (TST)--the task of transforming a text into any given style--utilizing general-purpose pre-trained language models. Our method, Prompt-and-Rerank, is based on a mathematical formulation of the TST task, decomposing it into three constituent components: textual similarity, target style strength, and fluency. Specifically, our method first uses zero-shot or few-shot prompting to obtain a set of candidate generations in the target style, and then re-ranks these candidates according to a combination of the three components above. Empirically, our method enables small pre-trained language models to perform on par with state-of-the-art large-scale models while consuming two orders of magnitude less compute and memory. Finally, we conduct a systematic investigation of the effect of model size and prompt design (e.g., prompt paraphrasing and delimiter-pair choice) on style transfer quality across seven diverse textual style transfer datasets.

Key facts. Cited by 49 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 33 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 May 2022.

Builds on

33 of 47 references.

References · 33

  1. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  2. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  3. 2019RoBERTa: A Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approachcited by 13,266
  4. 2019BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERTcited by 5,462
  5. 2019XLNet: Generalized Autoregressive Pretraining for Language Understandingcited by 2,801
  6. 2015Character-level Convolutional Networks for Text Classificationcited by 2,293
  7. 2019Language Models as Knowledge Bases?cited by 1,922
  8. 2018A Call for Clarity in Reporting BLEU Scorescited by 1,790
  9. 2020Making Pre-trained Language Models Better Few-shot Learnerscited by 1,255
  10. 2020BLEURT: Learning Robust Metrics for Text Generationcited by 1,196
  11. 2021BARTScore: Evaluating Generated Text as Text Generationcited by 719
  12. 2016Ups and Downs: Modeling the Visual Evolution of Fashion Trends with One-Class Collaborative Filteringcited by 517
21 more
  1. 2019MoverScore: Text Generation Evaluating with Contextualized Embeddings and Earth Mover Distancecited by 415
  2. 2017Toward Controlled Generation of Textcited by 271
  3. 2017Style Transfer from Non-Parallel Text by Cross-Alignmentcited by 246
  4. 2018Dear Sir or Madam, May I introduce the GYAFC Dataset: Corpus, Benchmarks and Metrics for Formality Style Transfercited by 209
  5. 2018Delete, Retrieve, Generate: A Simple Approach to Sentiment and Style Transfercited by 191
  6. 2020Reformulating Unsupervised Style Transfer as Paraphrase Generationcited by 181
  7. 2020Deep Learning for Text Style Transfer: A Surveycited by 161
  8. 2017Style Transfer in Text: Exploration and Evaluationcited by 145
  9. 2018Style Transfer Through Back-Translationcited by 124
  10. 2021A Recipe For Arbitrary Text Style Transfer with Large Language Modelscited by 107
  11. 2017JFLEG: A Fluency Corpus and Benchmark for Grammatical Error Correctioncited by 96
  12. 2019Style Transformer: Unpaired Text Style Transfer without Disentangled Latent Representationcited by 84
  13. 2019Transforming Delete, Retrieve, Generate Approach for Controlled Text Style Transfercited by 81
  14. 2020Politeness Transfer: A Tag and Generate Approachcited by 78
  15. 2019A Dual Reinforcement Learning Framework for Unsupervised Text Style Transfercited by 65
  16. 2019Evaluating Style Transfer for Textcited by 59
  17. 2018Unpaired Sentiment-to-Sentiment Translation: A Cycled Reinforcement Learning Approachcited by 55
  18. 2019"Mask and Infill" : Applying Masked Language Model to Sentiment Transfercited by 48
  19. 2021LEWIS: Levenshtein Editing for Unsupervised Text Style Transfercited by 40
  20. 2021Evaluating the Evaluation Metrics for Style Transfer: A Case Study in Multilingual Formality Transfercited by 23
  21. 2021Few-shot Instruction Prompts for Pretrained Language Models to Detect Social Biasescited by 21

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 5; 2023: 17; 2024: 19; 2025: 6; 2026: 2.

49 papers.

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  1. 2022Challenging BIG-Bench Tasks and Whether Chain-of-Thought Can Solve Themcited by 1,767
  2. 2023Navigating the Grey Area: How Expressions of Uncertainty and Overconfidence Affect Language Modelscited by 91
  3. 2022Follow the Wisdom of the Crowd: Effective Text Generation via Minimum Bayes Risk Decodingcited by 54
  4. 2023Tree-Planner: Efficient Close-loop Task Planning with Large Language Modelscited by 48
  5. 2023On Robustness of Prompt-based Semantic Parsing with Large Pre-trained Language Model: An Empirical Study on Codexcited by 41
  6. 2023Comparing Biases and the Impact of Multilingual Training across Multiple Languagescited by 36
  7. 2024Multi-property Steering of Large Language Models with Dynamic Activation Compositioncited by 35
  8. 2024StyleDistance: Stronger Content-Independent Style Embeddings with Synthetic Parallel Examplescited by 32
  9. 2024Deductive Closure Training of Language Models for Coherence, Accuracy, and Updatabilitycited by 22
  10. 2023Small Language Models Improve Giants by Rewriting Their Outputscited by 18
  11. 2023Prompt-Based Editing for Text Style Transfercited by 16
  12. 2024TinyStyler: Efficient Few-Shot Text Style Transfer with Authorship Embeddingscited by 16
37 more
  1. 2023Controlling Personality Style in Dialogue with Zero-Shot Prompt-Based Learningcited by 14
  2. 2023STEER: Unified Style Transfer with Expert Reinforcementcited by 14
  3. 2023Characterizing Attribution and Fluency Tradeoffs for Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Modelscited by 13
  4. 2024Are Large Language Models Actually Good at Text Style Transfer?cited by 13
  5. 2024Distilling Text Style Transfer With Self-Explanation From LLMscited by 12
  6. 2024Authorship Style Transfer with Policy Optimizationcited by 11
  7. 2023RAMP: Retrieval and Attribute-Marking Enhanced Prompting for Attribute-Controlled Translationcited by 9
  8. 2024Evaluating Prompting Strategies for Grammatical Error Correction Based on Language Proficiencycited by 9
  9. 2023Applying Large Language Models for Causal Structure Learning in Non Small Cell Lung Cancercited by 8
  10. 2024Improving Black-box Robustness with In-Context Rewritingcited by 8
  11. 2022Towards Robust NLG Bias Evaluation with Syntactically-diverse Promptscited by 7
  12. 2024Unsupervised Text Style Transfer via LLMs and Attention Masking with Multi-way Interactionscited by 7
  13. 2023ICLEF: In-Context Learning with Expert Feedback for Explainable Style Transfercited by 5
  14. 2024LMStyle Benchmark: Evaluating Text Style Transfer for Chatbotscited by 5
  15. 2024Text Style Transfer: An Introductory Overviewcited by 5
  16. 2025Steering Large Language Models with Register Analysis for Arbitrary Style Transfercited by 5
  17. 2022StyleFlow: Disentangle Latent Representations via Normalizing Flow for Unsupervised Text Style Transfercited by 4
  18. 2023Conversation Style Transfer using Few-Shot Learningcited by 4
  19. 2023Controllable Generation of Dialogue Acts for Dialogue Systems via Few-Shot Response Generation and Rankingcited by 4
  20. 2023Visual Captioning at Will: Describing Images and Videos Guided by a Few Stylized Sentencescited by 4
  21. 2024SC2: Towards Enhancing Content Preservation and Style Consistency in Long Text Style Transfercited by 4
  22. 2025SynthDetoxM: Modern LLMs are Few-Shot Parallel Detoxification Data Annotatorscited by 4
  23. 2022Claim Optimization in Computational Argumentationcited by 3
  24. 2024Survey of Natural Language Processing for Education: Taxonomy, Systematic Review, and Future Trendscited by 3
  25. 2025Reranking-based Generation for Unbiased Perspective Summarizationcited by 2
  26. 2023Reranking for Natural Language Generation from Logical Forms: A Study based on Large Language Modelscited by 1
  27. 2024Positive Text Reframing under Multi-strategy Optimizationcited by 1
  28. 2025Classic4Children: Adapting Chinese Literary Classics for Children with Large Language Modelcited by 1
  29. 2025SynDec: A Synthesize-then-Decode Approach for Arbitrary Textual Style Transfer via Large Language Modelscited by 1
  30. 2026From We to Me: Theory Informed Narrative Shift with Abductive Reasoningcited by 1
  31. 2023Can current NLI systems handle German word order? Investigating language model performance on a new German challenge set of minimal pairscited by 0
  32. 2024Frustratingly Simple Prompting-based Text Denoisingcited by 0
  33. 2024A Survey of Text Style Transfer: Applications and Ethical Implicationscited by 0
  34. 2024Human Speech Perception in Noise: Can Large Language Models Paraphrase to Improve It?cited by 0
  35. 2024CIKMar: A Dual-Encoder Approach to Prompt-Based Reranking in Educational Dialogue Systemscited by 0
  36. 2025Policy Learning with a Natural Language Action Space: A Causal Approachcited by 0
  37. 2026Forging LLM Authorship Fingerprints with Targeted Rewritingcited by 0