Due to its aggressive strategies, Microsoft dominates the personal computer market with its operating system, Windows, and its word processing / spreadsheet / presentation suite, Microsoft Office. One application is noteworthy for its widespread use in presentations and increasing use in academia, the presentation program PowerPoint.
Unfortunately, most people using PowerPoint have little or no clue as to how PowerPoint should be used. A common temptation is to copy and paste in everything they want to say (their manuscript) into the file and then read off of the file. I suspect they think this is better than simply having and reading a typed (and printed) manuscript because their audience can follow along; this line of thinking is simply wrong on both counts.
If you read from a printed manuscript, yes, you may lose us if you focus a lot on your paper; however, our attention (to the extent we're giving to your presentation) will be on you and not on your bursting-at-edges flood of words that's attacking both us (visually and mentally) and whatever PowerPoint template you've chosen to defile. We'll be looking at and listening to you.
If you dump your entire manuscript onto your PowerPoint presentation, we will not follow along. We're reading your slides for the first time and, most likely, not have your line-of-thought and the speed it grants you in reading and understanding your own words (the nightmare scenario is when you yourself don't understand what you were thinking at the time you wrote the text).
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Dear reader, I love PowerPoint. It's a simple, useful, and standardized presentation tool. Because I love it, I abhor its misuse. So, here I offer a quick list of "rules" for employing PowerPoint:
1. Be brief. PowerPoint is not your personal manuscript; it is our "tool" for understanding the organization of your thoughts and ideas. Keywords and dependent clauses will be your friends.
2. Understand and obey your template. When you chose or use a background, be aware of its effect on your audience's attention and whether your text or images complement or jarr against it.
3. Complementary images and text. Make sure the images you include in your PowerPoint presentation are relevant and can be justified either explicitly with text or implicitly with context.
4. "Widows" and "Widows with children." "Widows" (single words that end a paragraph on a new line) are ugly and distracting enough when reading a longer piece; they're down-right nauseating in a PowerPoint presentation. In a PowerPoint presentation, however, there's also "Widows with children" (words rather than a single word) whenever the ending of a paragraph does not reach at least half the line-length of the lines above it; when repeated, this becomes as distracting or maybe even worse than the regular "Widow."
This is just a brief list inspired my irritations at the PowerPoint presentation I'm currently visiting. It's less of a trainwreck that fascinates than one that causes migraines by its sheer wrongness.
