Developing Text

Your presentation's text lays the foundation for the presentation. Keep these basic presentation rules in mind when developing your text.

• Keep it simple.

• If you plan to present your slides to a large group , think about the people at the back of the room and what they can see.

• Keep the text to a minimum with no more than five bullets per slide and no more than five words per bullet.

• If you find a graphic that illustrates your point in a memorable way, use it instead of a lot of text.

PowerPoint provides several views that can help you organize your text. You can work with text and other objects one slide at a time in Normal view or, by clicking the Outline tab, you can work with all the presentation text on all slides at once.

PowerPoint also offers many text formatting features traditionally associated with word processing software. You can apply fonts and text attributes to create the look you want. You can set tabs, indents, and alignment. Finally, you can edit and correct your text using several handy tools, including style, grammar, and spelling checkers.

PowerPoint includes three types of text objects.

• Title text objects . Presized rectangular boxes that appear at the top of each slide ”used for slide titles and, if appropriate, subtitles

• Bulleted list objects . Boxes that accommodate bulleted or numbered lists.

• Text box objects . Boxes that contain non-title text that you don't want to format in bulleted or numbered lists ”often used for captions.

The first slide in a presentation typically contains title and text and a subtitle . Other slides often start with a title and then list major points in a bulleted list. Use text boxes only occasionally ”when you need to include annotations or minor points that don't belong in a list.

When to Enter Text on a Slide

Use the slide pane of Normal view to enter text when you are focusing on the text or objects of one slide at a time.

When to Enter Text in an Outline

If you are concentrating on developing presentation content, but not on how the text looks or interacts with other objects on the slide, use the Outline tab in Normal view. This view lets you see the titles, subtitles, and bulleted text on all your slides at a single glance.

The outline tab in Normal view is particularly useful for reorganizing the content of your presentation and ensuring that topics flow well from one to the next . You can easily move presentation topics up and down the outline.