Your audience doesn’t want to wait for text on the slide to appear!
I don’t mean each line of text coming in separately. There’s certainly controversy about that and I suggest that you make a choice based on your needs and your audience.
I’m talking about text that fades in, wipes in, flies in, etc. While that animation is happening, your audience has to wait until the text is readable. It’s annoying!
Watch this 15-second video as an example of annoying animation. Notice that even the slide titles fade in over a 2-second period. Then the slide text wipes in from left and from the top.
Of course, the less text, the better. But I often see even slide titles animated. Really, you don’t need any animation for slide titles — at all.
Removing animation on lots of slides can be time consuming. Display the Animations tab. On each slider, click an object, and choose None on the Animation gallery. Alternatively, click Animation Pane to display the pane, choose the animation there, click the down arrow to the right, and choose Remove.
If you have a presentation with too much animation, you can nuke it when you present. Go to the View tab and choose Set Up Slide Show. In the Set Up Show dialog box, check the Show Without Animation checkbox and click OK.
How do you feel about animated text? Leave a comment!
It annoys me to no end when presenters use NO animation, and just reveal the entire slide at one time. Often, it’s simplay an outline with bulletts that the presenter then reads. I don’t use lots of varied animation within a slide, but I do reveal one point at a time. I want my attendees to be WITH me, not AHEAD of me. I also make handouts that have fill-in-the-blanks for key words to compliment my visual aids…not duplicate them. Most of my visual aids are pictures.
I usually agree with your recommendations, Ellen, but you did lose me a bit here.
I agree completely that titles should not be animated.
I also agree about the dribbling in of letters and other complex animations that add nothing but time to the presentation.
I was not particularly rankled by the first example on your slide, because many of my slides are set up similarly. I teach and do a fair amount of presentations based on questions, so for me, the ability to display one sentence or line is very useful.
I do not like text which just pops on the screen … seems jarring to me.
Just my two cents worth …
John
John & Nancy,
I’m not against showing one line at a time, although many people don’t like it. In your situation, John, it seems appropriate although I might put each line on a separate slide if I wanted to interact with the students about each one. What I find annoying is any animation except Appear or Fade and even against a Fade that takes more than 1 second. When text is animated with a wipe, people try to read it as soon as it appears and it strains the eyes. I also think it’s annoying to be forced to wait. I usually put all of the text on the slide at once, but if you want to show it line by line, I think Appear or a quick Fade will annoy people least. John, I don’t find Appear jarring — quite the contrary — I find the Wipe animation jarring.
Nancy, I agree on having your audience with you. In this situation, I usually prefer putting each line on a separate slide. But if they really need to be on one slide, I would recommend using just Appear or a quick Fade. Handouts with fill-in-the-blanks are great and you can even create slides like that — and get suggested answers from the audience.
Thanks for responding, Ellen.
Completely agree about animations that take over 1 second – too slow. Mine are much faster, because I do want the content visible quickly to the group. I use Fade most of the time, because I like the effect … most others seem gimmicky.
It occurs to me that much of my content is “built” … subsequent content is based on previous content, which is a reason to parcel it out at a pace I determine, rather than all at once.
About the Wipe and Appear animations … I guess that is why PP has so many options, to meet different people’s preferences.
I am trying to use less text and more images in general, which eliminates this issue, but the content and context always rules:)
John