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How a presentation is designed has a significant effect
on how the information it contains is conveyed, perceived, and retained. These tips are
intended to help you make the most effective use of presentation technology.
DON'T USE ALL CAPS in
titles or body text. One way people read is by recognizing the shapes of words. If words
are all in caps, they are all shaped like rectangles, which make them harder to read -
especially in body text. All caps also take up more horizontal space. Instead of all caps,
use a larger size text, a different color, or a different font.
The 666 Rule (or, the
Devil made me do it): No more than 6 words per bullet, 6 bullets per slide, or 6 word
slides in a row. If you have more than 6 words per bullet, then it is not a bullet point -
bullets should not be complete sentences. More than 6 bullets per slide and your audience
will have difficulty reading the slide. Six word slides in a row means you've been talking
for at least 10 minutes without a visual. You may be losing the audience's attention.
Use a title on all your slides.
When a PowerPoint presentation is converted to web pages, the title is used in the
navigation frame; if there's no title, it's difficult for your audience to follow the
presentation.
Use bold and italic to
emphasize text, not as the main text style. Bold and italic text is useful to make certain
words stand out, but it's tiring to read an entire paragraph in bold or italic.
Use sans serif typefaces,
like Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana for presentations - the serifs (little "feet"
that hang off serif fonts, like Times) clutter the slide, making it more difficult to
read.
Always use your software's
alignment tools (center, right justification, custom tab stops) instead of lots
of spaces and default tabs to align text.
Use JPG format for images
embedded in a presentation, instead of BMP (bitmap), TIF, or PCX. JPG is a compressed
bitmap format; converting your images to JPG can reduce the file size of your presentation
considerably. Also be sure to crop and size your images appropriately.
Carefully double-check
your slides for spelling and grammar errors, and remove extra spaces or hard returns.
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