Many people who create PowerPoint slides for their bosses seem to be playing a game called “Let’s see how much useless stuff we can cram on a single slide before anyone notices that we are trying to make them look bad.” But no one ever calls them on it.
Too many people write out a conventionally boring speech filled with nothing but boring facts and figures and then they just cut and paste this hodgepodge into a PowerPoint slide. Then, in order to get really fancy and high tech, they stick bullet points in front of every sentence. (That will really wow the crowd!)
Or perhaps they stick a whole bunch of words in little boxes and then connect each box with an arrow to another box, preferably making audience members turn their heads sideways to read some of the fine print. That always works wonders if you want people to fall asleep.
Some PowerPoint slides are so ugly that they give audience members a headache just to look at it. When it comes to PowerPoint slides, less is more. And the more you put on a slide, the less your audience will absorb, remember or even pay attention.
It is bad enough to make people read words on a screen all the way across the room (because people are used to reading 12-20 inches away from their face), even if it is a few words. But to make people read whole entire paragraphs projected up on a screen is an unpardonable sin. Your audience doesn’t like it and they aren’t going to appreciate you subjecting them to this.
If you are going to use words on a PowerPoint screen (and I recommend you don’t), be sure NOT to use complete sentences. Use no more than three bullet points with no more than three words per bullet point.
It is crucial to avoid long sentences that wrap around from one side of the screen back to the beginning on the other side. If you are reading a wraparound sentence, like the preceding sentence on this page, it is easy on the eye. Your eye doesn’t have to move more than six inches from the last word on one line at the right side to the first word on the next line on the left side. But when you project sentences up on a 10 foot, 20 foot or even a 30 foot screen, your wraparound sentences are forcing people to move their eyeballs 30 feet. At a subconscious level, that strikes most people as just too much work.
Keep it simple and keep it pretty. Avid the ugly slides filled with tons of words and boxes and arrows and bullet points.
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