How not to let Powerpoint kill a presentation

Many people don’t realize the many ways that Powerpoint can hurt a presentation. The tips given here are designed to help you get the most from Powerpoint and avoid some of the downsides.

In many ways, organizing a presentation is similar to organizing an essay. You need a hook at the beginning to engage and pull in readers, an introduction and a roadmap, well-organized body sections with clear examples, and a conclusion or take away section at the end, maybe with a ‘kicker’ as in newspaper articles.

Also, one of the biggest problems in presentations is similar to one of the biggest problems in writing: too much clutter. Too many words in the presentation overall and especially too many words on each slide can kill a presentation. Remember: More is less and less is more.

Too many words on a slide is a problem because audience members will read whatever you put on a slide and stop listening to you. So if you put a lot of words on the slide you are, in effect, saying “please stop listening to me.“ That is a big mistake. You want the audience to listen to every word in your presentation, without distractions. 

A final note: when in an audience, you should analyze good presentation skills the same way you analyze good writing when reading a book. Remember what Roy Peter Clark says about how to read: “Read for both form and content. Examine the machinery beneath the text.” It’s the same watching a presentation: examine the machinery that makes a good presentation effective. If you really like something, ask yourself: “How did that person do that?” Conversely, if in a presentation you get bored or confused or sleepy, ask yourself what when wrong. Identify the good points and then practice them.  

For more on presentations, in addition to the tips below, see my “Mitho Lekhai” video called “Pro Presentations.”

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Janak Rai, Tribhuvan University:

I like to watch/read a PowerPoint presentation with:

• short sentences
• just a few main points
• big fonts [for my poor eyesight]
• a balance of visual/animations/photos and text
• easy-to-read font colors 

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David Citrin, University of Washington, Seattle, USA:

What kills a presentation:

• When the font is too small, or too big
• When pictures are stretched/blurry
• When slides are too 'busy,' – ALL of your content is there on one slide. 
• When the presenter just looks at slides and reads them to the audience.
• When the presenter tries to squeeze in too much into a presentation, forcing him/her to go too fast, to run out of time, and to skip over things.

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Shyam Sharma, State University of New York-Stonybrook, USA:

I think poor use of presentation material kills presentation; it is NOT PowerPoint that kills presentations but rather, how PowerPoint or any material is used. Blaming technology that can aid in presentation only as well as it is used is like blaming the tool (it is blaming the tool). Underprepared presenters also kill presentations. 

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Andrew Nelson, University of North Texas, USA 

My general presentation advice: 

• Use images to show, not tell.
• Make one (and only one!) argument. Make it clear from the start, build it throughout, and hammer it home in your conclusion. 
• Know your audience, and connect/engage/interact with them as much as possible.  

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Jim Fisher, Carleton College, Minnesota, USA

The only thing I can think of that kills a presentation is: not getting to it. Don't waste time on preparing the audience, just get the audience in the palm of your hand by plunging into the topic – the audience will follow.  

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Sujeev Shakya, Beed Consulting

• Know your audience – treat them like your customer, understand what they want to hear and how they want to hear it
• Use visuals in presentations, infographics do well
• Respect time – never go beyond the allocated time
• Imagine you are watching a movie. You want a good experience, so the key is to begin well, set the stage and have a good message at the end to take away. Like in movies, you need to deliver a ‘feel-good factor’
• Storytelling – people want to hear stories not speeches. Anecdotes and data all go a long way in keeping the audience interested
• Think in the language you are speaking in – there are different ways of delivery in different languages

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Mark Leichty, University of Illinois-Chicago, USA

I think the main thing to remember when it comes to using PowerPoint is that (with due respect to Marshall McLuhan): the medium is not the message! That is, the PowerPoint presentation has to be a means to an end, not an end in itself. 

• Too often presentations get bogged down in the technology itself. The absolute worst is when people simply read text off the screen. Also highly annoying is when people use all kinds of glitzy ‘special effects’ which often leads to the impression that they have invested more time in the technology than in the content. 
• My feeling is that PowerPoint can be effective but only if it is used to augment or amplify what the speaker is presenting verbally. For example, illustrative maps and images can be really effective and often help bring home a point by combining visual and verbal inputs that make content more memorable. 
• But too much text is deadly. Simply reading points on the screen usually puts people to sleep. Now and then, a text slide sign-posting movement through sections of a presentation can be good. And sometimes, slides with quoted material (ethnographic or historical) can be effective, especially if they are crucial to advancing the author’s conceptual agenda, or if the quoted material is linguistically important (in terms of word choice, code-switching, grammatical structures, etc.). 
• PowerPoint often does “kill good presentations” but it doesn’t have to. 

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Geoff Childs, Washington University in St. Louis, USA

What kills a presentation:

• Images that have no relation to the topic under discussion. Window dressing is a distraction. 
• A series of slides with text only (usually in a font too small to read) that the presenter reads word-for-word. We do not need help reading. Instead, provide short bullet points that you can expand on with analysis and illustrations. 
• Tip 1: Keep the text on each slide to a minimum and use font sizes large enough to be easily read from the back of any room where you may be presenting.
• Tip 2: Limit the number of images you use per slide. I prefer to use one image per slide so that everything I want to highlight is visible, or two images if I am comparing them. I often see slides in presentations with four or more images along with various text boxes. Simply put, it is a mess.  
• Tip 3: Learn how to use shapes and shading to highlight data in a table or trends on a graph. This is more effective than pointing your finger or a (bouncing) red laser dot at the screen.
• Tip 4: Learn how to integrate short videos (30 seconds to 3 minutes) into presentations. The videos should be embedded, not linked externally, to avoid irritating delays when things don’t work properly. Use videos to illustrate a point or support an argument.

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Kathryn March, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

Nothing kills a presentation like too much text, especially when the text exactly replicates what you are saying. (The only time when projecting exactly what you are saying is even remotely useful is when you know that your audience has limited English. In those cases, however, I still recommend offering an outline of your text as a printed handout not projecting it.)

If you use a projected presentation, use it to accomplish two (slightly contradictory) objectives:

1. To highlight main points: important words or concepts can appear as text, but this should be very focused and spare

• Outlines of your main points can be very helpful, especially if you offer them first as a roadmap for where your talk is going to go, and then in pieces as you discuss each section.
• Keywords should stand alone or with thumbnail definitions: you do not have to repeat them; you can use them smoothly in your talk, but they are there for the audience to confirm that they understand how you are using them.

2. To supplement your points: 

• With photographs or illustrations: these should not be generic clip art; they should be directly related to the point you are discussing—from the same time period, place, culture, or author—so that they do not just illustrate what you are talking about but, rather, actively enrich it.
• With findings or evidence: showing the ‘facts and figures’ allows the audience to evaluate them while you speak.
• With background or citation information: this could be biographical information about an author you are discussing or the bibliographic citation for a source you are using, or anything that allows your audience to follow up on the story behind your presentation.

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