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.”
Just wanna know more about presenting. Thnx
Jamiel, If you haven’t already done so, I invite you to sign up for my newsletter at http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/ppt_submit.html
Excellent post, Ellen!
I’ve always agreed bullets are boring and non-visual. (As Olivia Mitchell put it, “Bullet-point slides damage your brand.”) But until now, I’d not thought about them hiding the well thought-out argument behind a talk too, so that’s a great point.
Also, I’ve a post that presents work by Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, Jerry Weissman and others saying that each slide should be understood in only about 3-5 seconds, so listeners can keep their attention on the speaker instead of just reading. At that rate, you could only have up to about 15 words on a slide, which doesn’t equate to many bullets!
Anyway, thanks too for posting the makeover here of a bulleted list into several slides – seeing that example should really bring it home for people.
Thanks a lot.
Reading this just made me realise how bad mine was, yep it was boring (admitted).
A new and improved one, on its way.
Thanks.
BULLETS ARE AMAZING!!!!!!
It’s NOT about “can’t read the slide and listen to you at the same time.”
I really wish people would stop spouting that abject canard.
It’s about VISION.
From a UX point of view, a slide which you can’t read, but which the presenter is trying carefully to avoid reading from because he wants to not just repeat the words, is incredibly frustrating, negative UX.
Just finished watching a presentation about UX where the presenter made liberal use of images of cartoons with speech bubbles. The speech bubbles certainly had fewer than 6 lines in, and less than 6 words per line. But that didn’t help: as each slide came up, there was laughter from the first row or two of the room, but the rest of the hall was silent, growing more and more annoyed as each slide came up, as they could not read the punchlines, and the speaker was speaking about the slide as if we all knew what had happened in the cartoon and had got whatever point it was trying to make.
Occasionally, there was a cartoon without speech bubbles. The whole room chuckled at those, and understood what point was being put across. The difference was stark.
To have your text readable, use font sizes that are a significant proportion of the slide height. 1/8 is usually barely readable. The 6×6 or 7×7 rules apply only to all-text slides; if you mix text with other media (clipart, etc), then reduce those values proportionally to the remaining area.
Avoid text entirely if a good clear graphic can put the point across instead – things like a graph, chart, textless cartoon, photo, or wordcloud (these don’t need the smaller words readable, so long as people can see the general trends in the largest words). As long as the images are clear enough to make sense as an icon, it’s fine to use as a slide.
The same is true of all slides: if your slides are readable in the “overview” view of the talk, you’re probably either doing it right or have an annoyingly nice screen. If they’re not readable, then either rework, or hand out opera glasses.
I always thought that bullets are important to a PowerPoint presentation . Thank you for your valuable advice