Chapter 4 Part 3在线视频

Part Five

Common tips in making PowerPoint effective

PowerPoint is powerful when it is properly used

So avoid adding colors visual effects animations and images

to such an extent that may consequently ruin a presentation

Before preparing your PowerPoint first ask yourself

Should the PowerPoint be filled with text

How could I convey

what I want to say to the audience

How could I show the figure or data properly

Is my presentation simply too boring

Then pay attention to the following three criteria

Be professional

Be easy to read

And Be not distracting

To achieve these

keep the following dos and don'ts in mind

when you make an academic PowerPoint

First one is template and color scheme

You may choose from those ready-made templates

which are available online or make templates on your own

The suggestions are

Use your own template

which may save you much time

Pick those templates that are available

in both standard and widescreen formats

so that they can be well demonstrated

with different computers and projectors

Use template with high contrast of color scheme

Make sure the text looks fine

not only on your computer screen but also when projected

Take a look at the color wheel below

you'll find opposite colors on the wheel have high contrast

It seems yellow text on a blue background

will be the most visible to the most people

taking various forms of colorblindness into consideration

Don't use pure bright yellow on pure bright blue

because the contrast will just burn the eyeballs

out of your skull

So just make sure your color scheme has good contrast

between text and background

but not too high

In an academic presentation roughly

people use dark text on light background

or light text on dark background

that is "black on white" or "white on black"

However, dark backgrounds sometimes make it difficult

for some people to read the text

light ones are preferable

You may also try very dark gray

on a very light gray

That should provide good contrast for readability

without causing a lot of unnecessary eye-strain

over the course of an hour-long presentation

You can of course adapt this idea

for any colors you want

Put page numbers in the same location on each slide

Page numbers are important esp

when there is question time given to your presentation

The second is font and font size

An academic presentation wants no dazzling effects

but a clean and clear one

with everything to the point

So try not to use many fonts in one presentation

These are the criteria for picking fonts

Stick to fonts that are common to every computer

Pick those should work well on digital displays or projectors

Avoid Serif Fonts such as Times New Roman or Palatino

because these forms are sometimes more difficult to read

Pick Sans-Serif Fonts such as Arial or Helvetica

Serifs with the small line "tails"

at the edges of the letters

Sans-Serifs do not have the tails

at the edge of the letter

and are best to be read on the screen

especially with people having reading difficulties or dyslexia

Serifs are better to read when printed

Avoid using all capital letters—even for titles

All capitals will bring too strong a visual shock

and words are more difficult to read

Choose one font for your titles

and another for your body text

This makes text slides

a little bit more friendly to read

Avoid script type fonts—always

These fonts are hard to read

Make the font size large enough

to be easily read from the back wall of the room

Usually any phone size less than 24 points

is too small

to be reasonably read in most production situations

So keep most text at a 28 or 32 point size

with titles being 36 to 44 point size

To test the font, stand six feet from the monitor and see if you can read the slide

Keep the font size consistent in titles subtitles texts etc

If you give a subtitle 36

the other subtitles should also be 36

a text 28 the rest 28 so on and so forth

The third one is text

When you do the presentation

the audience is actually listening to you

not reading your slides

so you need to put those supportive images or words

on your slide

and avoid putting everything you want to say

In this case

bullet points could help you to structure your supporting details

and simplify your language

If employed properly

they are quite helpful

A slide without bullet points may also be more attractive

since it provides with more varieties

So design your text carefully to attract the audience's attention

The following suggestions may be helpful

Clearly label each screen

Use a larger font or different color for the title

Apply the 6 x 6 rule

That is no more than 6 words per line

and no more than 6 lines per slide

Too much information on a slide

gets confusing and hard to read

Remember

the audience is to listen to you

not to read your text

Avoid italicized fonts or shadowed text

as these are difficult to read quickly

Make sure each bullet point appears one by one

so that you could control

what your audience sees at any given time

otherwise, they will read ahead of you

and miss a significant part of your presentation

if the information is viewable in the screen

Don't forget to give the lines appropriate spacing

Highlight those important parts with bold face or another color

Paralleled phrases are more acceptable than sentences

Actually there's hardly ever a need

for a complete sentence in a slide presentation

Make slide transitions from one topic or point to another

so that it attracts attention and focuses interest

Use either italics or bold

not both to show your emphasis

Avoid abbreviations and acronyms if not necessary

Capitalize the initial letter of the first word

in each bullet point

Always check and recheck your spelling

Mistakes in spelling may not bring a disaster

to your presentation

It does leave the audience

an impression of a careless presenter

Avoid Chinese characters and Chinese punctuations

in an English presentation

Remember

Less is more

The less you show on your slide

the more attentive the audience will be to your speech

The fourth one is visual effects

When you do the presentation

what you want is when you speak

the audience is listening to you

when the text comes on the screen

the audience reads the text

and then focuses back to listen to the speech

So do not use crazy effects to distract the audience

Use limited and subtle effects like

"fade in" and "fade out"

since in a long presentation

frequent crazy effects equal eyes bleeding

Stop the moving text

Use "appear" effect

Use the "dim text" feature for bullet points

This places the emphasis on the current issue

and brings it to the forefront

while you are making your point

Punctuation marks

Punctuation marks are more often than not ignored by presenters

However when they are used

they should be used properly

Limit punctuation marks

For the bullet points if you don't use punctuation marks

just avoid using it in each bullet point

and if you use at the end of one point

apply to every point in every slide

Switch to English input

when you type in the English punctuation marks

Avoid using such Chinese punctuations as "、" and "《》"

use a comma to indicate a pause

and italicize or boldface

the name of the book

Space after the punctuation marks instead of before them

except the opening quotation and parentheses marks

There is no space before

or after a dash and a hyphen

No space is placed

after the closing quotation mark

also the closing parentheses mark

if it followed by another punctuation mark

period, for example

Ellipsis has three periods instead of six

Put a comma between the day and the year

when you employ the month-day-year pattern

No comma is needed in a day-month-year pattern

for example

Avoid putting the opening parentheses or quotation mark

at the end of a line

and the closing ones at the beginning of a line

Use comma or semicolon instead of period

at the end of the bullet point

as most of them are not sentences

Images videos and audios

Images videos and audios

should be wisely used in your presentation

since they can help save a lot of words

When you want to use them

keep the following suggestions in mind

Use images/pictures wisely

A picture speaks a thousand words

It's time-saving and vivid-looking

Avoid irrelevant pictures

no matter how attractive they look

especially animations

Choose large images of high quality

Don't take small images

because they may be distorted

when you project them on the screen

Avoid pictures with a watermark or any other distracting stains

Videos and audios are also welcome to assist your presentation

especially when you explain abstract or complex information

but you need to have a good control

of the time

Add captions to your videos

Citations

You may use a lot of information

taken from other sources

for example pictures data quotations videos/audios etc

Anything mentioned above

if is not original

should be cited correctly

Citation helps to avoid plagiarism

and citing properly

gives credit to the original author

To cite your sources within a PowerPoint presentation

you can include your references

or in-text citations on each slide

You can choose the following ways to cite

Provide the references verbally

for example

you can say

Based on the research by John Smith in 2002 ...

or you can provide a reference list slide

at the end of your presentation

with corresponding in-text citations

which is usually simple

in order not to crowd the slide

and which is placed at the bottom of the slide

As full citations take much space

many presenters choose truncated references

just the first author, journal and year

like the following example