Why You Should Put Less Text in Your Slides

January 2, 2010 in Ideas Presentability, Language : English, Slides, Speaking Tips | 6 comments


Most people complain about boring presentation that uses slides that looks like walls of text.

The brain don’t have the ability to listen et read all that text at the same time.

According to Microsoft, the average slide shows 40 words.


25 Years of PowerPoint


The BBC published an interesting article about the subject

You think bullet points make information more digestible? Think again. A dozen slides with five bullet points on each assumes that people are mentally capable of taking in a list of 60 points. If it’s a 30-minute presentation, that’s a rate of two-per-minute.

This looks a fairly interesting visual aid

This highlights the biggest problem with slide-based presentations, which is that speakers mistakenly think that they can get far more information across than is actually possible in a presentation.

I invite you to read the BBC article.


Share with me: How many words do you have on your slide?


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Posted by: Denis Francois Gravel


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6 comments

  2. Jon Thomas, Presentation Advisors’s avatar

    Jon Thomas, Presentation Advisors on January 3, 2010 at 14:08

    Great find. While I’m not surprised, it’s saddening that the average PPT slide has 40 words. Hopefully in a few years that average will be much lower.

    I actually wrote a post recently about how you can reduce the amount of text on your PowerPoint slide, which is often a question I get – http://bit.ly/71FM3g

    1. Denis Francois Gravel’s avatar

      Denis Francois Gravel on January 3, 2010 at 20:43

      Hi, I read your post. You share excellent tips. Thanks for sharing.

      I also agree, I hope we will have much less than an average of 40 words per slide in 2010.

      - Denis Francois Gravel

  4. Guymond’s avatar

    Guymond on January 12, 2010 at 15:36

    Here is a funny way to approach the subject

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=surngGJB5_Y

    Enjoy!

    1. Denis Francois Gravel’s avatar

      Denis Francois Gravel on January 13, 2010 at 08:34

      You’re right. Everything you shouldn’t do with PowerPoint.

      Funny!

      - Denis Francois Gravel

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