Don'ts in PowerPoint

Some personal prejudices you might like to consider...

1. Don't have dense, colourful backgrounds, it's the foreground that counts.
2. Don't use a photographic image as a background, it obscures the text. Even if it is made pale first, the audience spend time looking at it not the foreground text where the information is.
3. Don't use smaller text for sub-bullets - we still need to read them.
4. As to text appearing by animation on slides, if you must use it:
   1. if the audience has handouts, don't have text appearing in less than a slide at a time  - we cannot resist reading ahead of you
   2. if you do have text appearing, have it come from the right or below
   3. if you do have text appearing, do it page or bullet point at a time, not by line or word or letter.
5. Don't have more than 3 font faces or sizes on a slide.
6. Don't use fancy fonts, italics or bold for the body text.
7. Don't cram text on to slides, have a few simple points in good English, or headings as prompts for your talk.
8. Don't forget to rehearse and time yourself.
9. Don't use motifs or themes or clip art that have nothing to do with the subject, if there is nothing really relevant use nothing.
10. Don't use bullets on every slide, we are going to sleep. Number items if they are in an order or there are a specific number of items. It's also easier to talk about them.
11. Don't forget to number slides, it makes it easier to refer to them out of sequence.