Fine Tuning Your PowerPoint Skills

My PowerPoint Pet Peeves!

I recently attended a virtual meeting on Zoom...of course...and the presenter did a great job of explaining his subject matter but I was so distracted by a few issues with his PowerPoint document that I was having trouble concentrating! Let's talk about some of my PowerPoint pet peeves.

• Bullet items written as complete sentences
• Periods in bullet lists
• Revealing the complete bullet list all at once
• Numbers not correctly aligned

Bullet List "Rules"

The core of most presentations are bullet lists. Here are a few "rules" you should keep in mind if you are creating a presentation using them. 

• Do not write the bullet as a complete sentence. It is your job as the presenter to speak in sentences but your audience should not see your complete thought written out. They will have difficulty remembering a full sentence so write your bullet as thoughts or phrases.
• If you follow the advice of the above bullet, you should not be using punctuation in your lists. If the bullet is not a complete sentence, it does not need a period at the end of it! Feel free to use exclamation points or question marks but no periods.
• Use the animation feature in PowerPoint to reveal the bullets one at a time. Doing this will direct your audience's attention to the current bullet and not to the upcoming bullet points. It is not necessary to use some of the more distracting animations (grow & turn, swivel, and bounce) designed to spice up a 5th graders show, a simple "appear" is a good choice. 
• Keep the number of bullets on a slide to five or six. If you have more than that you should consider splitting the information into multiple slides.

Aligning Numbers

Sooner or later a presentation you are making will contain numbers. If the numbers all have the same number of digits you are in luck. You can simply use the tab key to move to the right and type your numbers. For the rest of you, you may resort to using the space bar to move to the right in hopes that the result will get the numbers to appear to be aligned on the right side...this is a pretty hit and miss approach. The best approach is to set a right align tab and use the Tab key to get those numbers straight. Here's how you do that.

1. Click in the text block where you will be inserting the numbers
2. If you see a ruler across the top of your screen you're golden. If you do NOT see a ruler, click the View Tab, Show Group, Ruler.
   
   
   
3. On the far left side of the ruler, you will see the Tab Box. This is where you select the alignment type you need to place on the ruler. Your options are left, center, right, and decimal. As you click this box the image changes to reveal the four types. Click until the right alignment tab is displayed in the box, it looks like a reverse "L". (See picture below)
   
   
   
   
   
4. Once the right tab is displayed in the Tab Box, move your mouse to the ruler and click where you estimate the right side of the number list should be placed. The right alignment icon will appear on the rules. Now, as you type your entries, use the Tab key to jettison to the set tab. Type your number and it will build to the left and align on the right side!
   

   

   
   
   
5. If you determine that the tab on the ruler should be moved left or right, select the list and drag the ruler tab left or right. The numbers will move accordingly. 

Now you can concentrate on your content and getting your point across in your presentation and not fret about the little things like bullets and number alignment!

Happy Computing!

Diane McKeever

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