Less is More
The fewer words used on a slide the impact they have. Learn to bullet point your key messages and that way they will have a greater emphasis on the screen. An example, rather then showing; “We are number 1 in sales for 2009” it would be more
impactful to display; “Number 1”. This has the added benefit of making the audience reliant on you to further explain. If your bullet point is self explanatory then the audience will read it ahead of you and have no further reason to listen.
Number of Points
There are a lot of theories surrounding the ideal number of points that should be on any given slide. We recommend ‘six’ as a total but that is only a recommendation. If you have the ‘Seven Secrets of Success” you are hardly likely to show the first six on one slide and the seventh on another. Be mindful that your company doesn’t have guidelines on how many points are permitted as you would want to stay within policy guidelines.
Capitalise Titles
A common mistake that takes away from the professionalism of a slideshow would be the misuse of capitalisation. Titles which appear at the top of the slide should be Title Case whereby the first letter of each word is capitalised. The bullet points should be in sentence case where only the first letter of the first word is capitalised. Again, check with your company’s guidelines to make sure you are consistent with policy.