2. What is PowerPoint?
PowerPoint is a complete presentation graphics
package. It gives you everything you need to
produce a professional-looking presentation.
PowerPoint offers word processing, outlining,
drawing, graphing, and presentation
management tools- all designed to be easy to
use and learn.
4. 1. PowerPoint, when displayed via a projector,
is a useful tool for showing audiences things
that enhance what the speaker is saying. It
is a useful tool for illustrating the content of a
speech, such as by showing photos, graphs,
charts, maps, etc., or by highlighting certain
text from a speech, such as quotations or
major ideas. It should not be used as a
slide-show outline of what the speaker is
telling the audience.
5. 2. Slides used in a presentation should be
spare, in terms of how much information is
on each slide, as well as how many slides
are used. A rule of thumb is to put no more
than eight lines of text on a slide, and with
no more than eight to ten words per line. In
most cases, less is more, so four lines of
text is probably better. Don’t display charts
or graphs with a lot of information—if it’s
useful for the audience to see such things,
pass them out as handouts.
6. 3. Unless you’re an experienced designer, don’t
use the transition and animation “tricks” that
are built into PowerPoint, such as bouncing or
flying text. By now, most people roll their eyes
when they see these things, and these tricks
add nothing of value to a presentation.
7. 4. Above all, use high-contrast color schemes so that
whatever is on your slides is readable. Unless you
are a talented graphic designer, use the templates
that come with PowerPoint or Keynote, and keep it
simple—high concept design in a slide presentation
doesn’t help in most circumstances, unless you’re in
the fashion or design fields. If you use graphics or
photos, try to use the highest quality you can find or
afford—clip art and low-resolution graphics blown up
on a screen usually detract from a presentation.
8. 5. Rehearse your PowerPoint presentation and
not just once. Don’t let PowerPoint get in the
way of your oral presentation, and make sure
you know how it works, what sequence the
slides are in, how to get through it using
someone else’s computer, etc. Make sure
that you can deliver your presentation if
PowerPoint is completely unavailable; in
other words, make sure you can give your
speech without your PowerPoint presentation.
9. 6. Get used to using black slides. There are few
speeches that need something displayed on
the screen all the time. If you include a black
slide in your presentation, your audience will
refocus on you, rather than on the screen,
and you can direct them back to the screen
when you have something else to show them.
Put a black screen at the end of your
presentation, so that when you’re done, the
PowerPoint presentation is finished and off
the screen.
10. 7. Concentrate on keeping the audience focused on
you, not on the screen. You can do this by using
slides sparingly, standing in front of the audience in a
way that makes them look at you, and, if possible,
going to the screen and using your hand or arm to
point out things on a slide. If you expect to be using
PowerPoint a lot, invest in a remote “clicker” that lets
you get away from the computer and still drive your
presentation. If you don’t have one of those, it’s
better to ask someone to run the presentation than to
be behind a screen and keyboard while you talk.
11. 8. If you show something on a computer that requires
moving the cursor around, or flipping from one screen
to another, or some other technique that requires
interaction with the computer itself, remember that
people in the audience will see things very differently
on the projection screen than you see them on the
computer screen. Keep motion on the screen to a
minimum, unless you’re showing a movie or a video.
It’s better to show a static screenshot of a Web page,
embedded on a slide, than to call up the Web page in
a browser on a computer. If you want to point out
something on a Web page, go to the screen and
point at it—don’t jiggle the cursor around what you
want people to look at: their heads will look like
bobble-headed dolls.
12. 9. Don’t “cue” the audience that listening to your speech
means getting through your PowerPoint presentation.
If the audience sees that your PowerPoint
presentation is the structure of your speech, they’ll
start wondering how many slides are left. Slides
should be used asynchronously within your speech,
and only to highlight or illustrate things. Audiences
are bored with oral presentations that go from one
slide to the next until the end. Engage the audience,
and use slides only when they are useful.
13. 10. Learn how to give a good speech without
PowerPoint. This takes practice, which means giving
speeches without PowerPoint. Believe it or not, public
speaking existed before PowerPoint, and many
people remember it as being a lot better then than it
is now. A few people use presentation software in
extremely effective ways—Steve Jobs and Stanford
Law Professor Lawrence Lessig are two examples. Al
Gore’s use of Keynote in the movie “An Inconvenient
Truth” was a good model. But these three examples
don’t look at all like the way most people use
PowerPoint. Avoiding bad PowerPoint habits means,
first and foremost, becoming a good public speaker.
15. 1. Write a script.
A little planning goes a long way. Most presentations are written in
PowerPoint (or some other presentation package) without any
sort of rhyme or reason.
That’s bass-ackwards. Since the point of your slides is to illustrate
and expand what you are going to say to your audience. You
should know what you intend to say and then figure out how to
visualize it. Unless you are an expert at improvising, make sure
you write out or at least outline your presentation before trying to
put together slides.
And make sure your script follows good storytelling conventions:
give it a beginning, middle, and end; have a clear arc that builds
towards some sort of climax; make your audience appreciate
each slide but be anxious to find out what’s next; and when
possible, always leave ‘em wanting more
16. 2. One thing at a time, please.
At any given moment, what should be on the screen is
the thing you’re talking about. Our audience will
almost instantly read every slide as soon as it’s
displayed; if you have the next four points you plan to
make up there, they’ll be three steps ahead of you,
waiting for you to catch up rather than listening with
interest to the point you’re making.
Plan your presentation so just one new point is
displayed at any given moment. Bullet points can be
revealed one at a time as you reach them. Charts
can be put on the next slide to be referenced when
you get to the data the chart displays. Your job as
presenter is to control the flow of information so that
you and your audience stay in sync.
17. 3. No paragraphs.
Where most presentations fail is that their authors, convinced they
are producing some kind of stand-alone document, put
everything they want to say onto their slides, in great big chunky
blocks of text.
Congratulations. You’ve just killed a roomful of people. Cause of
death: terminal boredom poisoning.
Your slides are the illustrations for your presentation, not the
presentation itself. They should underline and reinforce what
you’re saying as you give your presentation — save the
paragraphs of text for your script. PowerPoint and other
presentation software have functions to display notes onto the
presenter’s screen that do not get sent to the projector, or you
can use notecards, a separate word processor document, or
your memory. Just don’t put it on the screen – and for
goodness’ sake, if you do for some reason put it on the screen,
don’t stand with your back to your audience and read it from the
screen!
18. 4. Pay attention to design.
PowerPoint and other presentation packages offer all sorts of ways to add visual
“flash” to your slides: fades, swipes, flashing text, and other annoyances are all
too easy to insert with a few mouse clicks.
Avoid the temptation to dress up your pages with cheesy effects and focus
instead on simple design basics:
Use a sans serif font for body text. Sans serifs like Arial, Helvetica, or Calibri
tend to be the easiest to read on screens.
Use decorative fonts only for slide headers, and then only if they’re easy to
read. Decorative fonts –calligraphy, German blackface, futuristic, psychotic
handwriting, flowers, art nouveau, etc. – are hard to read and should be
reserved only for large headlines at the top of the page. Better yet, stick to a
classy serif font like Georgia or Baskerville.
Put dark text on a light background. Again, this is easiest to read. If you must
use a dark background – for instance, if your company uses a standard template
with a dark background – make sure your text is quite light (white, cream, light
grey, or pastels) and maybe bump the font size up two or three notches.
Align text left or right. Centered text is harder to read and looks amateurish.
Line up all your text to a right-hand or left-hand baseline – it will look better and
be easier to follow.
Avoid clutter. A headline, a few bullet points, maybe an image – anything more
than that and you risk losing your audience as they sort it all out.
19. 5. Use images sparingly
There are two schools of thought about images in presentations.
Some say they add visual interest and keep audiences
engaged; others say images are an unnecessary distraction.
Both arguments have some merit, so in this case the best option is
to split the difference: use images only when they add important
information or make an abstract point more concrete.
While we’re on the subject, absolutely do not use PowerPoint’s
built-in clipart. Anything from Office 2003 and earlier has been
seen by everyone in your audience a thousand times – they’ve
become tired, used-up clichés, and I hopefully don’t need to tell
you to avoid tired, used-up clichés in your presentations. Office
2007 and non-Office programs have some clipart that isn’t so
familiar (though it will be, and soon) but by now, the entire
concept of clipart has about run its course – it just
doesn’t feel fresh and new anymore.
20. 6. Think outside the screen.
Remember, the slides on the screen are
only part of the presentation – and not the
main part. Even though you’re liable to be
presenting in a darkened room, give some
thought to your own presentation manner –
how you hold yourself, what you wear, how
you move around the room. You are the
focus when you’re presenting, no matter how
interesting your slides are.
21. 7. Have a hook.
Like the best writing, the best presentation shook their
audiences early and then reel them in. Open with
something surprising or intriguing, something that will
get your audience to sit up and take notice. The most
powerful hooks are often those that appeal directly to
your audience’s emotions – offer them something
awesome or, if it’s appropriate, scare the pants off of
them. The rest of your presentation, then, will be
effectively your promise to make the awesome thing
happen, or the scary thing not happen.
22. 8. Ask questions.
Questions arouse interest, pique curiosity, and
engage audiences. So ask a lot of them. Build
tension by posing a question and letting your
audience stew a moment before moving to
the next slide with the answer. Quiz their
knowledge and then show them how little
they know. If appropriate, engage in a little
question-and-answer with your audience,
with you asking the questions.
23. 9. Modulate, modulate, modulate.
Especially when you’ve done a presentation before, it
can be easy to fall into a drone, going on and on and
on and on and on with only minimal changes to your
inflection. Always speak as if you were speaking to a
friend, not as if you are reading off of index cards
(even if you are). If keeping up a lively and
personable tone of voice is difficult for you when
presenting, do a couple of practice run-throughs. If
you still can’t get it right and presentations are a big
part of your job, take a public speaking course or join
Toastmasters.
24. 10. Break the rules.
As with everything else, there are times when
each of these rules – or any other rule you
know – won’t apply. If you know there’s a
good reason to break a rule, go ahead and do
it. Rule breaking is perfectly acceptable
behavior – it’s ignoring the rules or breaking
them because you just don’t know any better
that leads to shoddy boring presentations that
lead to boredom, depression, psychopathic
breaks, and eventually death. And you don’t
want that, do you?
