I have attended four conferences so far this year. One thing that caught my attention is how many presenters load up their PowerPoint slides with walls of text. At one conference, some presenters had so much on their slides that only those in the first row or two could read it. I should have brought opera glasses. One thing to keep in mind as you put together slides for a talk, whether at a conference, in class, or somewhere else is that what’s on the screen is competing with what you are saying. While you are talking your message is too important to hide behind PowerPoint.
The Function of Slides
When I was a young professor in the 1980s, we came to class with detailed lecture notes to keep us on track, and used chalk and blackboards that were in the front of class (and sometimes along the sides). I didn’t write a lot on the board because writing took time away from teaching. I used the board to list a few bullets, for example, I would spell out terms or names so students could write them correctly in their notes. I might write a list of things, but one or two words each–what we now call keywords. If I was showing students how to do a calculation, such as a t-test, I would walk them through it step by step on the board. What I was writing was not competing with what I was saying, but was complementing it–adding not subtracting.
Your Message Is Too Important to Hide Behind PowerPoint
I have no nostalgia for blackboards. The dust irritated my throat, and I often felt having to write on the board was stealing teaching time. I much prefer the asynchronous use of PowerPoint where you can refine your slides in advance, and you aren’t limited to just text. However, I think sometimes people don’t think much about what the role of the slides should play in their presentation. Because you aren’t in front of a group of people waiting for you to finish writing, you can just load the slides with everything that might have been in lecture notes in the 1980s. This is a mistake because people can’t be reading the slides and listening to you talk. The slides are competing with the speaker.
Well Designed Slides Enhance Your Message
Slides can serve several functions. Some have only text, whereas others can have photos, illustrations, tables, videos or other graphic devices to help explain the message. A few things to keep in mind.
- Slides with text should only have bullet points. Keywords and short phrases are better than sentences. The audience doesn’t need to be reading what you are saying, and when they are reading, they aren’t listening.
- Limit the number of bullets on a slide. Too many rows are distracting as people are trying to process the list as you are talking.
- Quotes should be on their own slide. There are times that you want to include entire sentences or even a paragraph. You can read it to the audience (they can read along if they wish). Or pause to give the audience some time to read it. But use quotes sparingly as people are there to hear your words and not someone else’s.
- Photos, illustrations and tables deserve their own slide. There might be exceptions, but generally you don’t want to mix text and nontext because busy slides are distracting and hard to process. The text can be on its own slide, and the graphic is on a separate slide. You don’t need a text explanation of the graphic–use your voice for that. You only need a title.
For some speakers the walls of text serve as their lecture notes, but this is not a good strategy. If you need notes to keep on track, it is better to go old school and print them onto paper or onto note cards. The PowerPoint slides should be designed for the audience and not the speaker. When you are speaking your message is too important to hide behind PowerPoint.
Image generated by DALL-E 4. Prompts: “Walls of text in a powerpoint presentation”, “Just the wall in front, and don’t write “walls of text””, “This image with people in the seats and a person speaking in front”
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Excellent presentation tips!