The text and its layout on a slide should summarize the points on the topic currently being covered by the presenter. They should, where possible, be as brief as possible and should also be logically and hierarchically organized through appropriate indentation.

1. Text as a summary,
2. One topic per slide,
3. Progressive text appearance,
4. Indentation, and
5. Pre-packaged presentations.

5.2.1.1 Summary

Each slide should maximize the impact on the audience with the least amount of text. By minimizing the text on each slide as much as possible, the audience can quickly read the slide and use it as an outline as to what the speaker will cover in the next minute or two. Twenty words may be read by the audience in a second or two and consequently they may now focus their attention on the speaker.

The speaker benefits from abbreviated text, also: in any presentation there is always the possibility that the speaker may forget the next point. If the speaker turns to a slide filled with 50+ words to cue him or herself as to what to say next, it will take a few seconds to: first determine where on the slide the speaker is at, and then second determine what is to be said next. It will be quite apparent to the audience that the speaker is reading his or her own slide.

Another benefit is audience retention: members of the audience will allow their minds to wander. Every audience will, throughout the presentation, consider things such as:

• What happened the last meeting,
• What is happening after this meeting,
• What is the family doing this weekend,
• Think in detail about a particular point raised by the speaker,
• Focus on an error made by the speaker or on a poorly chosen image or slide, or
• Think about how bad the presentation really is.

All of these thoughts will cause distractions. The speaker must realize that these distractions, despite great efforts to the contrary, will occur. By using effective summaries of the discussion, this will allow the audience to, having decided to turn their focus back on the presentation, to quickly reorient themselves to what is currently being discussed.

Conversely, too much text on any slide will have negative consequences:

• The speaker will, invariably, begin reading the slides verbatim, and
• The audience, rather than listening to the speaker, will simply read the slides.

Kschischang refers to slides which dense text as eye exam slides, as is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A modified version of Kschischang's eye exam slide.

5.2.1.2 One Topic

A slide should contain a single topic. If two or more significantly different topics are presented on one slide, the audience will be reading the second topic while the speaker is still discussing the first. As is human nature,

5.2.1.3 Indentation

PowerPoint's ease of indenting points (Tab to indent, Shift-Tab to unindent) together with an automatic and appropriate changes in font size makes it possible to easily arrange points hierarchically.

Consider the following outline for a presentation:

Outline Background The engineering problem and requirements Possible solutions Solution 1 Solution 2 Solution 3 Engineering analysis Requirement A Requirement B Requirement C Requirement D Summary, conclusions, and recommendation

In this example, all bullet points are a the same level of indentation and therefore suggests each has approximately equal weight; however, the list of possible solutions are sub-topics of the list of possible solutions and the engineering analysis will be performed by considering each requirement in turn. Consequently, indentation can be efficiently used to simplify the slide:

Outline Background The engineering problem and requirements Possible solutions Solution 1 Solution 2 Solution 3 Engineering analysis Requirement A Requirement B Requirement C Requirement D Summary and conclusions

Notice that both slides have identical text, however, the hierarchical slide is much easier to read. When an audience member views this slide, they will focus on the main points and realize the discussion will follow the indented material and realize that the discussion will be a simpler sequence of

Outline Background The engineering problem and four requirements Three possible solutions Engineering analysis based on four requirements Summary and conclusions

5.2.1.4 Progressive Text Appearance

PowerPoint allows the speaker to allow text to appear following successive mouse clicks or after a fixed period of time. This can be useful if the speaker cannot restrict the amount of text on the screen, but would also like to avoid having the audience read ahead. This is most useful if there are two or more different but related topics where each topic does not merit having an entire slide or where the speaker would like to reference back to previous comments.

5.2.1.5 Pre-packaged Slides

The reader may have attended lectures where the presenter uses the slides produced by the published of the course text book. Because the designer of the text-book slides is unaware of the skills or knowledge of the presenter, it is common to include a significant amount of text in these slides. These should not be used as models for effective slides.