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:
- Who is my audience?
- What do I need to convey to this audience?
- 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.
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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.
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