Presentation Slideware

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BEWARE THE TERRIBLE PowerPoint slide! A long bulleted list of all your speaking points on a distracting background is a surefire way to detract from your speech and lose your audience’s attention. Blooma/Shutterstock

Sitting through hours of slides from your Aunt Sonja’s vacation is boring. Sitting through a slide show that essentially repeats your speech outline can be positively unbearable.

Presentation slideware (such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, and Prezi), when used appropriately, allows you to have a one-stop home for lots of different presentation aids without having to awkwardly move back and forth between media. However, presentation slideware is frequently misused by speakers who plug meaningless text or pointless visuals into slides without considering how to keep the audience’s attention. You may, in fact, be familiar with the phrase “death by PowerPoint” (DuFrene & Lehman, 2004).

Too often speakers allow their slides to dominate their presentations, attempting to wow the audience with their technical proficiency rather than focusing on interesting points or well-researched evidence. We often warn our students that the fancier and more detailed the digital presentation, the more suspicious we are of the information being presented.

If you decide to use presentation software in your speech, here are some tips for developing effective slides: