Month: December 2011

by Jennie Ruby

"PowerPoint…has beaten the bulleted list to death," says Skills & Drills reader Jeannine Statter. "Add a new content slide to a PowerPoint presentation and up pops a bullet followed by Click to add text. [Because every]  new slide [is presented] this way, I'm lead to believe I need a bulleted list whether I really have items that need bulleting or not."

She goes on to say that "A list is an invaluable means of presenting information when it is used properly.  But a sea of bullets in a presentation or manual is just as ineffective as no bullets at all." Her colleague Michael Stein seconds this opinion:

Tufte's opinion [on bullets and builds] seems to be too heavy handed. The goal of a presentation is to convey information to the consumer in the manner that works best for the delivery of the content.  Sometimes bullets are not effective. Sometimes bullets are effective. Sometimes they are most effective when displayed one at a time. This is particularly true when the presenter needs to convey a dramatic point. If you saw all of the bullet points at one time, the presenter would lose the impact.

For example:

• In 1940, 4,000 molecules per million of carbon in the atmosphere
• In 1950, 25,000 molecules
• In 1960, 400,000 molecules
• In 1970, 2.5 million molecules

Displaying all of these at once would take away from the dramatic impact. Making the font size for each subsequent bullet larger would make it even more dramatic. The presenter should determine if bullet points are the right choice for conveying this particular piece of information. Tufte goes too far when he says that they should never be used.

Stein gives us some good guidelines, echoing Melanie Scott's comments from last week:

To design an effective presentation, the presenter must ask the following questions before deciding upon the presentation medium and manner of presentation: 

1. Who is my audience?
2. What do I need to convey to this audience?
3. What is the best method for conveying this information to this audience?

But what if we have multiple audiences using the material in various ways and in various situations? Stein tells us:

If the presentation is to be given to the audience in an electronic format for later personal use, then the presenter must change the presentation for this format. What works effectively for a live, in-person presentation does not work effectively for the person viewing the presentation on a computer or iPad. When presenters provide the audience with an electronic copy, it is necessary to provide presentation notes to explain the slide content.

Failure to heed this last point: providing notes to explain slide content, is the pet peeve of reader Julie Warnus:

If I ruled the world, every creator of a presentation would include his/her script in the Notes portion. We have thousands of PPTs posted on our intranet or saved in our records management system. A good number of them are utterly useless — because there is no accompanying text that explains the slides.

This complaint is certainly well-taken, but I find that I do not add speaker notes because I often use PowerPoint to create a handout for the audience. I am concerned that if what I am going to say is in print in front of the audience, they will be distracted by reading instead of listening, or they will be reading ahead instead of participating in the current discussion. Am I just a control freak? Or is this a legitimate concern?

My practice is usually right in line with what reader Kay Honaker says:

I use a presentation as much for myself as for my audience: it helps keep me organized and assures that none of the amazing and salient points I want to make are left out. Thus, bullet lists on multiple slides serves the same function as an outline. Each list item is a talking point from which I can launch into discussion or analysis, follow a teaching moment, give background, answer questions.

She seems to share my concern about distraction:

If I'm [talking] for any length of time I blank the screen so the slide doesn't become a distraction.

What do you think? Should slide presentations always contain speaker notes? Should those be in front of the audience during the presentation? Is there a convenient way to create the handouts with no speaker notes, but then make the speaker notes available when putting the presentation online for wider consumption? Am I being, as Tufte says, "authoritarian" or too controlling if I want to use builds in PowerPoint to keep the audience with me? Can revealing bullets one by one be very effective, as Stein says? If you have techniques or opinions on these questions (especially on "Is Jennie a control freak?"), we would love to hear from you.

About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

by Jennie Ruby   

This week a number of our readers have joined me in finding some good uses for lists and bullet points. However, that does not mean they reject Tufte's criticisms of bullet overkill (pardon the pun) in PowerPoint use.

For example, Josie Chaney writes:

I agree with you whole-heartedly. I think Tufte is ananachronism. I do however agree with him regarding avoiding the "rollout" of information on each slide; I do think it's too controlling and that there's benefit to allowing the audience to "read ahead" in their attempt to understand and relate bits of info together. I also don't like the repetition of information much; I've seen whole presentations which seem just to repeat buzz-word bullet points and leave crucial questions unanswered. I think if presenters/editors were focusing on answering one or two key questions per slide, while trimming redundancy, it would become clearer whether the presentation provides all the audience needs or expects.

Skills & Drills reader Melanie Scott agrees:

I think Tufte may have over-generalized his hatred of bullets and/or the learning community may have over-applied it.  I haven't seen the whole presentation, but it sounds like Tufte is saying that in training and presentation content the right number of items in a list is zero but not that bullet points are all bad. 

She also says,

It sounds to me that Tufte is really railing against those presenters who create bland, all-bullet content (or word-for-word presentations) using graphics [that] are boring, unreadable and sometimes meaningless and who use canned backgrounds which have nothing to do with the presentation.  [He is also railing against presenters] who think that they must read every word on the slide (or make the class read them), and that is all they do. (This is what many of us were trained to do, me included.  We have to learn to do better and lead by example). Tufte's focus is the presentation of information, not the absolute eradication of bullets and lists in all areas. 

Scott goes on to specify some times when bullets can be used without contradicting Tufte's caution about using them as content:

There are times you need to list things-as Jennie mentions, objectives, steps, etc.  Objectives aren't content, they're introductory… a "here is what we want to accomplish" message. Checklists and process steps are not always necessary in the [content of] training. Sometimes they should be part of the resource material.

Nevertheless, Scott sees ways to avoid bullet lists on slides even when presenting step-by-step training:

Steps can be taught without bulleted lists-one slide per step in order, with specific instructions on why it is first/second/third, which also allows for effective use of images to highlight the step.

Scott sums up what a number of readers thought:

I think Tufte's biggest point is this: when presenting any kind of information (print, training, eLearning, etc), we should consider all the possibilities, with our audience in mind, and use the methods which present the information in the clearest, most concise manner.  According to research, adult learners need training/learning experiences to include experiential components, which allow them to think and apply what is presented.  Bad charts/graphs/visual, presentations and bullets don't do that.

We have more on the use of lists and bullets for next week, so it is not too late to weigh in. If you have particularly good–or particularly bad–example lists, I would love to hear from you.

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About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.