Dr. Atherton also did research comparing slides with significant bulleted [...]]]> Chris Atherton (and more about her here) has a great blog post on how to give a presentation that keeps your audience’s attention. It’s from the angle of student presentations (she’s a college lecturer), but the points apply to any presenter.

Dr. Atherton’s research

Dr. Atherton also did research comparing slides with significant bulleted text and those with little text. Students were tested on the material. In multiple-choice tests, there was no difference, but in short essay tests, students who saw what she calls “sparse slides” did twice as well.

You can see Dr. Atherton’s slides on slideshare, but they aren’t fully comprehensible without the presentation she gave on the subject.You can read a good write up in Olivia Mitchell’s blog.

What about business presentations?

Even for business presentations, you want your audience to understand and remember what you say! So, what do you do?

My Tell ‘n’ Show^SM method shows you how to create slides without bullets. Not only is it easy, your slides will look so much better. And you’ll gain more success meeting your goals, whatever they may be. For a free course, download my white paper, “From Death by PowerPoint to Life by PowerPoint with the Tell ‘n’ Show^SM method.”

You can do it! Banish bullet points forever!

Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in [...]]]> Are you still creating PowerPoint slides with lots of bullets and text? This 4-min. video will revolutionize how you create presentations. You’ll see a makeover, step-by-step, that gets rid of a distracting background and turns a boring, bulleted slide into a clear, image-rich presentation.

"How many bullets should I put on a slide?"

First I’ll tell you what others are saying. Then I’ll give you my answer.

“6 lines or less per slide, 6-8 words per line”

“6 words per line, 6 lines [...]]]> People often ask, “How many bullets should I put on a slide?”

"How many bullets should I put on a slide?"

First I’ll tell you what others are saying. Then I’ll give you my answer.

“6 lines or less per slide, 6-8 words per line”

“6 words per line, 6 lines per slide”

“Limit the number of bullets per slide to five or fewer.”

You get the picture.

I think that rules like this are nonsensical.

It’s not that they’re totally wrong. It’s true that you shouldn’t have too much text on a slide. Why? When you display the slide, people start reading it. They can’t read the slide and listen to you at the same time. You might as well stand silently for 2 minutes while they read, because they aren’t listening to you.

But bullets have other problems: (Caution: Here come a couple of bullets!)

• People associate them (from long experience) with boring presentations
• They represent an outline or list format
• They’re a text-based, non-visual method of communicating

Bullets are boring

The truth is, people have had bad experience with presentations that have too much text and too many bullets. So you start out on the wrong foot when you use slides of bulleted text. People immediately tune out.

Bullets are for outlines or lists

What’s wrong with outlines? When you present, you should be developing your message logically. For example, you might state the premise that most people waste a huge amount of money paying interest to the bank for their mortgage. Then, you need to back up that premise with fact, figures, examples, anecdotes, and so on. Your presentation shouldn’t be an outline. It should be a full development of ideas.

Of course, that full development should be expressed in what you’re saying. But bullets give the impression that what you’re saying is just an outline, rather than a well-developed presentation.

Bullets are text based, non-visual

The purpose of PowerPoint slides is to add a visual aid to your speaking. So, let it be visual! Remember that your talking is the presentation; the PowerPoint slides are not the presentation.

A great deal of research shows that people will remember effective grasphics more clearly and longer than text. And you do want people to understand and remember what you’re saying, don’t you?

However, the images need to be related to what you’re saying. They should either add to the understanding or create a relevant emotional impact. Irrelevant images actually hinder remembering, according to research.

What do I use instead of bullets?

If you have a lot to say, how do you avoid bullets? An easy way is to put one concept on a slide. Just break up those 6 bullets into 6 slides. And add relevant, powerful photographs, charts or diagrams. If you want to tie up the ideas into a conclusion, then you can put them all on the 7th slide. At that point, your audience will be familiar with the concepts and can integrate them more easily.

Time for some visuals!

For example, you could take this slide…

… and expand it to these three slides.

Then, if you want to review the three ways to help audiences understand, use the bulleted slide as the 4th slide. By then, they’ll understand the 3 items and the slide will have more meaning.

When are bullets OK?

Besides summarizing, is there ever another good time to use bullets? Bullets are lists, and sometimes you want a list. For example, an agenda slide is a good place for bullets.

agenda slide

There’s nothing wrong with this slide. No images are necessary. It’s meant to be a list. You’re not developing any ideas. There are no concepts to wrap one’s brain around. On the other hand, you could use SmartArt in PowerPoint 2007 or 2010 to make the list more graphic. Or even turn the agenda into a visual timeline.

Garr Reynolds in his blog, Presentation Zen, says the following:

“People often ask me how many bullet points is enough for their presentation. My answer is always the same: as few as possible…how about zero? In general, the more bullets your PowerPoint has, the less effective your presentation will likely be.”

* Quickly get rid of bullets * Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points

Sometimes, you can’t think of a way to avoid bullets. So, how do you [...]]]> Bulleted text elicits a lot of animated, opinionated discussion. I’ve covered the pros and cons of bulleted text and provided some tips for working with, or without, them:

* Quickly get rid of bullets
* Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points

Sometimes, you can’t think of a way to avoid bullets. So, how do you format them?

Some people like to animate (build) the bullets so that they come in one-by-one. I recently heard a Web seminar by an experienced presenter in the CAD (computer aided design) field say, “I hate it when people bring all the bullets in at once. I can’t figure out which item the presenter is talking about. Please, make it easy on me.”

And just before that, I heard another experienced presenter say, “Building bullets is like spoon-feeding the audience. I hate it when presenters do that!”

So, is there a middle ground? Yes! This technique brings in all the bullets at once, dimmed, but readable. Then you undim them as you discuss them. People who like to see all the bullets at once are happy, and those who like a clue as to the current item you’re discussing are fulfilled as well.

PowerPoint doesn’t have an undimming feature, so you need to change the font color, using animation. Here’s are the steps:

1. Format the bullets in a medium color, such as gray. Make sure that the color you choose is visible against your background.
2. Choose Slide Show>Custom Animation. (In PowerPoint 2007, choose the Animations tab> Custom Animation.
3. Select the text placeholder with the bullets by clicking anywhere inside it.
4. Choose Add Effect> Emphasis> Change Font Color. (You may have to click More Effects to find the Change Font Color animation.)
5. Set the Font Color to the default font color. Set the speed to Fast; there’s no reason to make audiences wait while the font changes color. Keep the default On Click in the Start box, so that you can undim each line as you get to it.

Try this technique the next time you create a bulleted slide and see if the audience is happier!

I thought that this was an old story, but then I read Don Norman’s recent essay, “In Defense of PowerPoint.” I decided that [...]]]>

But how do you get rid of bullets? Recently, a woman called me to ask if I had any courses explaining how to create presentations without bullets. She was [...]]]>

Why would you want to get rid of bullets in your presentations? In short, they can turn a good presentation into a boring one.

But how do you get rid of bullets? Recently, a woman called me to ask if I had any courses explaining how to create presentations without bullets. She was interested in a guide, templates, how to design slides, a sample set of slides, and more.

I don’t have such a course (yet), but I wanted to offer a quickie solution for now. Before that, let me say a couple of things:

• Designing presentations without bullets is easy, but involves layout, thinking about your content and the processes you’re describing, working with images that function as metaphors, and more.
• I recommend Cliff Atkinson’s book, Beyond Bullet Points. It’s a complete system for designing and organizing presentations without bullet points. You’ll find a short description at the right. (See “Books by Others.”)

Now for the shortcut. This is especially useful if you have existing presentations that you want to change in a hurry. Follow these steps:

1. Open a presentation that has bulleted text.
2. Display the master (View > Master > Slide Master). You see an example here.


Slide Master

3. You might as well start by deleting the third to fifth level, which I recommend that you never use. So many outline levels makes for a confusing organization of ideas.
4. Select the first two levels and choose Format > Bullets and Numbering.
5. In the Bullets and Numbering dialog box, click None and then click OK to return to your slide.
6. You’re not done yet, because if you type text on a slide that wraps to a second line, that second line will be indented as it is for bulleted text. So, make sure that the Ruler is displayed. (View > Ruler.) Here I’ve labeled the markers that you need to work with.
   

   Ruler Display

7. Click the first level of text, as you see in the image and drag the hanging indent marker for the first level text all the way to the left, so that it’s underneath the First Line Indent marker for first level text. This lines up the text so that it’s all aligned in block format to the left.
8. Click the second level of text and drag the hanging indent marker for the second level text so that it’s underneath the first line indent marker for second level text. The indent markers should be lined up like this:


lining up the indent markers

9. Click Close Master View on the Slide Master View toolbar and you’re done!

You need to go through your presentation and see if this works. (You can always undo your change!) If you have slides that have a lot of text on them, you may feel that the slide is now confusing. For example, here’s a slide with the bullets.



slide with the bullets

Here’s the same slide without bullets.



slide without the bullets

It’s hard to tell where one item starts and another ends.

Here’s one solution:



alternating text colors

By alternating text colors, you can distinguish between the items.

But, as I mentioned at the beginning, another solution entirely might work better. This is the concept of thinking about your content in terms of processes.



content in terms of processes

Try this with your own presentations and see what you can come up with!