Section 10 - Presentation Tips

• Don’t spend too long on any one slide. The audience needs a change of scenery about once every 30 seconds or a minute. Only put the major concepts on a bulleted list. Use keywords instead of sentences or paragraphs of text. Make sure all the bullets are punctuated the same, and have similar construction. If you have rehearsed your presentation properly, you should only need to have major points displayed and can fill in the rest of the information in your speech. If you need additional information for yourself, you can print a copy of speaker’s notes with elaboration of the bullet points.

• Limit the number of bullets per slide to no more than four. More bullets may look cluttered and force you to reduce the font size.

• Avoid using the “rehearse timings” function which automatically advances slides in your presentation. Regardless of how well rehearsed you are, the unforeseen happens and you may get out of sync with your slide timer. Moving forward manually allows more control over the progression of slides in case you have to pause to answer a question from the audience or need to elaborate more extensively.

• Use graphics, animation, and sound only when making an IMPORTANT point. Too much clutter (graphics, animation, sound) detracts from all the hard work you have put into your presentation.

• Always check your spelling! Spelling and grammar errors ruin a speaker’s credibility. How can an audience trust the speaker’s research if the speaker is not careful enough to check their spelling?