Dos and don'ts of PowerPoint

The experts say PowerPoint should be used only to reinforce what a presenter says.

• Speeches should be practised and memorised.
• A slide should be presented after the presenter has made the point.
• Limit the number of words used on a slide.
• Restrain use of animation and sound for impact.

SOURCE: DEAKIN KM

Alternatives to PowerPoint

• Apple: Keynote
• IBM Lotus: Freelance Graphics
• Macromedia: Flash
• Sun Microsystems: Star Office Impress

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Power, up to a Point

By Sue Cant / The Age January 27, 2004
Nex

It has given confidence to mediocre public speakers, captivated the business world and was recently implicated as one of many factors leading to last year's Columbia space shuttle crash.

It is a piece of software from Microsoft called PowerPoint.

First sold in the early 1990s, many hundreds of millions of copies have been installed around the world. It is available with Microsoft's top-selling Office suite of software that sells tens of millions of copies each year.

Some say PowerPoint should be abolished for spreading incomprehensible jargon, while others say they could not survive their working day without it.

For a piece of software, it produces some very emotional reactions.

Trillions of PowerPoint slides are shown across the world each year, making it the standard global business tool for presentations.

PowerPoint is used for presenting information in a slideshow format using text, charts, graphs, sound effects and video, and its proliferation is linked to the demise of the overhead projector.

It is the lingua franca of the public-speaking circuit, boardroom and university lecture hall, and increasingly it can also be found assisting with classroom lessons, parents' group meetings and school science fairs.

There are few other presentation software packages that have become so synonymous with public speaking, although Apple Computer, IBM's Lotus division and Sun Microsystems also publish software with similar features.

Allan Pease, a Brisbane-based public speaker and author of the bestseller Body Language, uses PowerPoint at an average of 100 conferences a year in 30 countries. " I think it's great. It's a living, talking extension of the speaker," he says.

But others argue that people now use the software as a crutch and they are sending audiences to sleep with its bland customised slides.

Edward R. Tufte, professor emeritus of political science, computer science and statistics and graphic design at Yale University in the United States , has argued that PowerPoint is making us dumber.

In an essay on the software, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, he argues that PowerPoint diminishes the quality, reasoning and analysis of information."

In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (readymade designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis," he says.

In a recent article in Wired magazine ("PowerPoint is Evil"), Tufte compared the software to an expensive prescription drug that promises to make us beautiful, but can't."

Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: it induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall."

He argues that PowerPoint elevates format over content, "betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch"."

Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials."

Last year the software came in for a caning from those investigating the Columbia space shuttle crash, who criticised NASA for its heavy reliance on PowerPoint material for internal communications.

When the investigators sought out a report documenting details of the shuttle's design or performance, they often found only PowerPoint presentations, the Los Angeles Times reported.

They suggested that using the software to present complex information - including an engineer's assessment of possible wing damage during the mission - might have been dangerous."

It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realise that it addresses a lifethreatening situation," they wrote in the report on the cause of the crash.

Public figures are also concerned about its "dumbing down" effect in the political realm.

Don Watson, a speechwriter for former Australian prime minister Paul Keating, cites the US President's use of PowerPoint bullet points in press conferences as a prominent example."

It's a major marketing exercise and its shameless. They are selling wars or superpower policies as if they are selling a new product or a Hollywood blockbuster. "Even Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address has been put into a PowerPoint slide."

Lincoln would not have thought of these words in PowerPoint. Put it into a PowerPoint and you demolish it," Watson argues.

Watson, who has written a book about the way business jargon has permeated public language, says PowerPoint should be "abolished" for its "deep level of stupidity".

Watson argues that the software, along with business jargon - much of which originates from IT language such as "embedded" and "nodes" - highlights a "serious disease which has gripped us all. The language has evolved as the equivalent of an assembly chain. The doctrine of the bottom line has a lot to do with it, it's about protecting the interests of consultants."

In his book Death Sentence - the Decay of Public Language, Watson suggests that the "journey into the fog" of management language may have emerged with the birth of Microsoft. " No one 'enhances' like the IT business," he writes."

Managerial language may be to the information age what the machine and the assembly line was to the industrial. It is mechanised language. Like a machine it removes the need for thinking."

Pease agrees it might have the effect of reducing communication and memory. Before the printing press was invented in the 15th century, news was generally spread by word of mouth. Pease argues that since then people's memories have continued to decline. "Computers have removed our ability to think," he says.

But while he says the longterm impact might be negative, in the short term it might rescue a bored audience."

Have you ever heard an economist give a speech?" Pease asks with a laugh.

Professional public speaking agents are scathing of the software and call it "Death by PowerPoint"."

We encourage our speakers not to use it as it really is a killer, particularly in a conference," said one consultant based in Sydney, who declined to be named. "The speakers that are doing better are the ones that have ditched it."

But PowerPoint proponents argue it is a fast, efficient way of presenting information.

International business lecturer at Melbourne University Ann-Wil Hartzig says it has become a necessity to keep the attention of students in university lectures and she cannot imagine teaching without it."

Their attention levels are much lower if they don't have a computer to look at," she says. "I know that students do expect PowerPoint and they complain if they don't get a handout (of the slides) or have to download it from the internet. But Hartzig says that in a small group of people the software can create a barrier to communication and there is a risk of form being emphasised over content. The main thing it is good for is that it brings structure to the presentation, which is helpful for both the presenter and the audience, and in an educational setting that is very important."

It probably does allow you to get your point across more easily. It's easier to summarise what you have done in the previous session. It's more efficient and it allows more people to present adequately."

PowerPoint trainer Mark Linton-Smith says the software actually forces people to use the two parts of the brain responsible for reason and creativity.

The creative part is activated by the need to add design elements into a presentation through pictures and graphics while the logical side is employed to limit people's tendency to be verbose when speaking in public."

People present ideas in a ramshackle way. It's there as a tool to help someone talking (but) you can saturate them with too much movement and too many visual effects which can be numbing," Linton-Smith says.

He disputes the argument that PowerPoint has reduced the quality of the information provided in presentations.

Just because the tool can be misused doesn't mean the tool should be thrown out, he says. "I can't see how a completely inert computer program can do that. How can PowerPoint do anything. It's waiting for a human being to misuse it."

Linton-Smith says people are turned off PowerPoint when they see the use of Microsoft's "revolting" templates that presenters may use in lieu of their own. "It's that stamp that everybody has seen and it's very ordinary. It's like anything generic. It has that blandness and bad taste look about it.

"It's like buying a tacky birthday card. It's much nicer to make your own."

Linton-Smith says he has seen the best speakers come undone through disorganisation, when someone in an audience asks a question and the speaker has to shuffle through overhead projector slides to find the answer. "There is rarely an audience that is as good as the best speakers and it helps the best speakers to stay in the mind of the audience. It's a support for the speech but it doesn't do the speech for you. The speech has to be delivered just as well (with or without it)."

In an increasingly visual age people need visuals to keep them stimulated, Linton-Smith says. "If it were the case that people were not visual we would always listen to the radio."

Paul Arrighi, a trainer with consultancy Deakin KM, says the problem comes when presenters "surrender control to PowerPoint"."

Public speaking is frightening for a lot of people. They use it as a crutch," he says."

The secrets to successful presentations were established by the classical orators (but) structure, preparation and emphasis are all as relevant today as they were then."

PowerPoint should be placed in context as a modern embellishment, a tool that if used correctly alongside the basic presentation skills can increase your audience's understanding of the points you are making."

Microsoft Australia 's Stephen Jones says there is "good and bad" with a lot of innovation.

He says the company has advanced the software to make it better and easier to use but people are still "lazy".

"It's not the tool. It's the use of the tool. People need to be skilled in the use."

OPINION LETTERS

Many scientists and engineers still use the overhead projector and even the black board. It is troublesome to include equations in a PowerPoint presentation. We prefer to use a free software called Tex or Latex. With this software we can easily produce slides which can be copied on to transparencies. My own impression of PowerPoint is that it is only suitable for presentations in which the speaker just wants to skim over the surface of a topic. It is not suitable for a detailed in-depth analysis.

Ken Palmer, Professor of Mathematics, National Taiwan University

As a university lecturer for 30 years, 20 of those teaching IT, I confess to having never authored a single document using PowerPoint and only occasionally stumbling through a document written by others. Why should I, when there is a far superior format avail able called HTML - which emphasises content over presentation? This is web-friendly, easily searchable, platform neutral, small in size and most browsers allow easy manipulation of content (see an example program, copy it and paste into an editor). If you want prettiness, then you can use stylesheets, tables, forms and frames. I reach an inter national audience of students, conference attendees and learners from all over the world by using a lightweight open standard format, which would be hard to do using PowerPoint or any of its equivalents.

A/Prof Jan Newmarch, School of Network Computing, Monash University , Frankston, Vic 3199

I just wanted to add my own opinion about PowerPoint and other such tools. I would say the problem with PowerPoint is that it is a restrictive interface, therefore people often through laziness and lack of competence will just use the templates and presentation methodology already contained within PowerPoint instead of using their own style. While we can blame the individual for this, the truth is that it is more difficult for most people to apply the creativity they want to an electronic document as it is to a traditional transparency.

A severe limitation with PowerPoint is the inability to edit slides on the fly. With traditional transparencies, you can use the slide as a piece of paper where necessary, and scrawl over it various comments etc. With PowerPoint at its current level of develop ment, this is not feasible. The consequence of this is that people no longer have the ability to tailor or edit their slides as they go, and let the PowerPoint file too rigidly constrain their presentation. The traditional transparency is like a white board, and PowerPoint and other such programs lack this functionality at present. A software tool should enhance communication, and not provide restrictions.

Further, if you want to point to something on an overhead projector, you use your finger, and everyone sees it. With LCD projectors, people have started using annoying laser-pointers, which are difficult to see and shake about all over the place. The mis takes which you quote for people using PowerPoint are the same mistakes that they made with slides. People are lazy, nervous, and incompetent when it comes to presenting. Many lecturers and public speakers simply compile a bunch of bullet points and read them out. I say, shame on them, but I don't blame the software. I don't see any conspiracy either, just an unevolved tool being used by people who have always been incompetent.

Having graduated from uni in 2001, I know first-hand that students in lectures ask for PowerPoint files because it makes them feel like they have comprehensive notes, except the contents are usually superficial and of little benefit. The real content is in the oration during the lecture, and in after-hours study, and in proper notes, and the bullet- point content of a PowerPoint file simply does not support this level of detail. What students want is to feel nice and reassured that they have all the information summar ised in one tidy ready-to-go document, but they are simply avoiding the reality that they have to go and do the work. Lecturers also have a habit of trying to "keep students happy", instead of going the hard-yards and educating them properly.

While the university lecturer may like to argue that PowerPoint is really helpful, the reality is that many lecturers are barely competent to have an opinion on public speak ing, and no good lecturer I had ever relied on PowerPoint. What students need to take with them at the very least is a comprehensive set of notes, and lecturers avoid generat ing these notes because it takes more work.

I expect that as the technology improves, computer-presentation software will get more customisable and more flexible. I don't believe that Microsoft are deliberately dumbing people down - rather, I believe the technology is still in its infancy. For example, the development of tablet notebooks with screens on which you can jot notes down, solves a lot of problems which currently stick out.

And the ability to integrate video and other multi-media into presentations is purely additional capability, and will only improve the ability to present data. It can also be misused, but this is no different to going overboard with colour textas on a transparency.

Finally, I found it curious that you referred to "its bland customised slides" - these surely are generic slides, as they are provided with the software for general use. I avoid these slides, and try to create something a bit unique, simple, and easy on the eye. More to the point, I then go ahead and learn the presentation off by heart, know my material back-to-front, and use the slides when I need to illustrate a point visually. If my presentation sucks, I don't blame the slides.

David Gildfind, Hamilton, Qld

It is pleasing to see the current debate on PowerPoint, but such discussion will only be beneficial if we resist the temptation to oversimplify what is essentially a fairly complex issue the most efficient way of communicating our ideas. It seems that PowerPoint is being used synonymously with computer presentation methods in general, and that is unfortunate. PowerPoint is just one piece of software that can be used for the presentation of ideas, whereas any information that can be displayed on a computer screen or through a computers audio outputs can be projected to the large screen and microphones of the many different brands of computer projection systems.

The skilled user of this technology has a breathtaking array of software for the presentation of ideas. One can project spreadsheets, text documents, graphs, drawings, paintings, mathematicians can visualise functions, biologists and psychologists can construct working, pulsating artificial neural networks. In the seminar room or lecture theatre, one can call up video clips, animations, generate code in C++ or go on the net to access its vast resources. The limits here are not the technology, but our own ideas and our imagination.

It should also be remembered that the latest versions of PowerPoint have gone well beyond the templates and bullet points of earlier versions and can now integrate and coordinate all the previously mentioned sources. One can jump from PowerPoint into other programs and back again. PowerPoint presentations can be produced on very high resolution physical slides and transparencies, printed as thumbnails and text, downloaded from the net and sent as email attachments. By any standards, PowerPoint is an exceptionally flexible and powerful platform.

When I teach students how to use PowerPoint, I begin by telling them that the best paper I ever heard was presented by a chap who walked into the theatre, didn't even look at the lectern, leant against a table and just talked for 20 minutes about his ideas. At the end of the paper, the audience sat silent, not out of any lack of appreciation, but stunned by his creativity, his eloquence, his incisiveness and his rare ability to communicate complexity in clear simple language. By contrast, the worst paper I ever experienced was a content-free PowerPoint disaster all lights, colour, sound and text darting in from all angles.

PowerPoint, the computer, the projector, the software are just tools, mere instruments. They are not ideas, and the medium should never be allowed to substitute for the message. Computer presentation methods are not going away. We should embrace them, learn how to use them properly and teach our students how to use them effectively. In the hands of a Segovia , the guitar is capable of transporting the listener to what seems to be a whole new world of sound, feeling and emotion. In my hands, it is just bits of wood and strings. If our ideas are not good or if we lack imagination or do not have the skills, the judgment, the humour, the timing and the enthusiasm of the good speaker, then all the presentation tools in the world will not save us.

Associate Professor Cyril R. Latimer, School of Psychology , University of Sydney

I am a university student and am always at lectures where PowerPoint is the main source of visual communication of a topic. Ninety-nine percent of my lecturers use PowerPoint throughout their lectures, and unfortunately the majority of them use this tool unsuccessfully. From putting entire paragraphs on slides to reading slides word for word - I have seen them try it all to keep the students paying attention.

What cannot be argued is the fact that I prefer it when lecturers have these presentations (they put them on the Net) - it means I can bring the slides to class and take notes on what is important. However if a lecturer or any speaker wants to hold the attention of their audience a PowerPoint presentation isn't going to cut it! Great or even good public speaking involves communicating through body language, tone, facial expressions, gestures, eye contact and relating the topic to the audience. Anything can be interesting if a speaker makes an effort to make the topic matter to those listening!

I am a huge fan of PowerPoint as a speaker's tool - I use it myself in moderation - but I agree that it's use has morphed from tool to aid to crutch and is no longer being used for it's true purpose. I realise we are moving into a new age where the food is fast, the world is smaller and the technology is taking over but this is talking, for Pete's sake - we have to do that on our own don't we?

Kylie Jarrard, Chadstone , Victoria

I use Power Point all the time. How come my filing cabinet contains a large folder full of "anti-Power Point" articles? Power Point is a tool. If used mindlessly, it is boring and anti-educational. If used with discrimination, it represents real progress.

It is often forgotten that Power Point replaces 35mm slides (remember them?). Slides were expensive and slow to produce. When we left them to the last moment, they were never back in time from the photographers, who became thoroughly fed up with disorganised lecturers. The projector carousel was always missing. The projector had to be locked away in a special booth which had to be unlocked for every lecture. The phantom unlocker was never there when you needed him. And remember all those times when a slide was upside down or back to front? With PowerPoint, all these problems have ceased to exist. I can make last-minute changes on the morning of a lecture with no cost and minimal effort. I just plug my CD (or USB drive) into the computer and off we go.

Is the medium really the message? Marshall McLuhan was certainly correct when he drew our attention to the visual generation who can't listen unless there is something on the screen. I fantasise about giving a lecture where I just talk and do not have visual aids but I lack the courage to try it because I would probably have a riot on my hands. What about style versus substance? When it first appeared, PowerPoint seemed to have great impact. Suddenly it became universal practice to use lurid graded colour backgrounds. Each slide slid into place with accompanying sound effects, but it was not long before these became an increasing irritation. The very slickness that seemed so appealing became a "turn off". Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I never use graded colour backgrounds. Plain white for me every time, with black writing. My fonts are large and clear. I never use fancy visual effects for introducing new slides.

More radical still, I counter the slickness of Power Point by drawing most of my diagrams with a black felt-tip pen on pale blue squared graph paper. If necessary, I colour them in sparingly with felt tip pens. I use my $100 scanner and save them as JPEG files, which are compact, generic and easily inserted into Power Point. The resulting image has far more impact. It is much quicker to draw diagrams by hand than on computer using a mouse or graphics tablet. Hand drawing eliminates the temptation to include too much detail, small text or unreadable colour combinations.

The daily newspapers often have articles that are relevant to my teaching. After breakfast on the morning of a lecture, I often scan in the headings or pictures from relevant articles from the day's newspaper and burn a new lecture CD before heading off to work. This gives the lecture a sense of immediacy and relevance to the "real world", whatever that is.

I often tweak the colour, brightness or contrast of scanned images using Graphic Converter. This is a $25 shareware program for the Mac. It is like a simple, fast and friendly version of Photoshop, although it may not be really necessary, because Power Point has some of its facilities built in.

What about handouts? At a recent lecture to medical students, I announced that there would be no handouts. It was official university policy that students were expected to listen and take notes. Shock, horror! One student stood up and announced: "On behalf of the class, we demand handouts". Handouts are part of what is now known as "triple delivery". The material is on the screen, in the handout, and read out word for word. Mind-numbingly boring. These days it is also expected to be on the web. Quadruple delivery; no need to attend the lecture at all. Surely what comes in the ears is of no account. McLuhan's astute observations all those years ago may help explain the common complaint of patients that their doctors don't listen.

Handouts rob the lecture of any sense of surprise, which I regard as an important part of teaching. As the lecturer drones on, the students glance at the handouts, anticipating what is to come. "Done that one, now the next one is coming up...". If I give handouts, it is usually at the end of the lecture. One student complained bitterly that this was "not fair". Later, he thanked me because he discovered that it forced him to actually listen to what I was saying and got much more out of the lecture (McLuhan again). I'm a real bastard. I warn the students that the handouts will not contain all the material that is presented on the screen, so they actually have to listen and take notes. I pace up and down the aisles and ask questions to see if students are awake.

Lectures should stimulate interest and motivate further enquiry. They also serve the more mundane function of facilitating learning by summarising, simplifying and explaining what is most important. How do we avoid reducing students' expectations to a series of bullet points? Once I had to give a lecture on April Fool's day. Were the students going to get me? Far better that I should get them. I gave a perfectly straight lecture. At the end I announced that they knew what day it was. I might have put in some bullshit into my lecture, or I might not have. The only way to find out would be to go to the library and do some reading.

Professor J.W. Goding, Department of Pathology and Immunology, Monash University Medical School , Victoria

I ran what was arguably the largest presentation bureau in Sydney in the late 90s when 35mm slides were made from PowerPoint for presentations. We had over 8000 clients per annum giving presentations including Alan Pease, Jodie Rich, Brad what's his name and many more notables. They all did and most do use PowerPoint as the most easily editable software to make very last minute changes to speaker support slides.

I had 14 years of presentation production experience and was a pioneer in the use of 35mm slides for presentation in Australia when they were the only colour output from a computer. I have travelled extensively to the US where we had an international network for providing last-minute or full presentation slides to Australian and American presenters. Hell, I have a T-shirt announcing PowerPoint Extreme, that's how strong this product became. There was an enormous industry in Europe , US and Australia that survived off PowerPoint.

Was/is it a good product? Hell, yes. Is it the best speaker support media for quick or last-minute presentations? Without a doubt. Does it leave all other presentation software in the dust? No way. Flash is great for uneditable animated presentations which mix programmable elements that PowerPoint doesn't have, and PowerPoint is cumbersome for big, mpeg (movie)-enhanced presentations.

Your comments from my old client Alan Pease, for whom we produced slides in the early 90s is fine if you have the charisma, confidence and only need the odd word to be highlighted but most people:

•  leave presentation preparation to the last minute

•  need a quick editable software to use that most service subordinate staff can use

•  need a crutch to distract the audience from a raft of inadequate, potentially boring, monotone type presentations which are livened up by colour, words and images

•  suffer from laliaphobia (fear of public speaking) so, no matter what they try they just want to get through it. Sure practice helps but really, how many talks does the average bod do in a corporate year? Really? Not enough to go through the agony methinks.

This is one time to thank Bill Gates for supporting the biggest phobia we suffer in life. Some say the fear is greater than death, taxes, mothers-in-law and spiders.

Rob Matthews, Sydney , NSW

I use PowerPoint a lot but only to highlight key points being made and to introduce a limited amount of visuals to maintain interest. The greatest crime - but unfortunately extremely common - is to transfer a presentation to PowerPoint and then to read each slide to the audience. This is sheer torture.

Malcolm Halliwell, Maidenhead Berks, UK

Sue Cant's cover story is further evidence of the essential contradiction contained in presentation software (including word processing packages): form can rule over content. Thinkers on technology have been concerned for some time with the potential for software (though the word wasn't around early on) to limit free communication and creativity. It is worth going back to what they have said.

Doug Englebart, the systems engineer who actually wrote the prospectus for the modern personal computer in the early 60s, titled a seminal paper 'Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework', rather than 'Supplementing Human Intel lect'. Machines only augment what goes on between the ears, what we assume is right, and what we tell each other. And as Michael Heim notes in his 'Electric Language', a study of early word processing and its effect on writing, the philosopher Heidegger spoke of the danger of 'calculative thinking' by the 'language machine' which over-emphasises systemisation and invented efficiency and rationality in managed frameworks, such as that found in word processing packages or presentation software.

Of course, PowerPoint and other presentation softwares can be great for presenting precise and unambigous technical information, but I particularly fear the fact that more and more people are depending on complex arguments and complex concepts being reduced to a set of dot points with six newspeak words or less per line that meet corporate needs. Life is ambigous, contested and complex, why can't we learn to cope with this basic fact in the communication society, instead of thinking that a good presentation will act as a good cover? Software of all sorts should be used to augment human creativity, not the other way round.

Larry Stillman, Centre for Community Networking Research, School of Information Management and Systems, Monash University , Victoria

I often want to strangle PowerPoint abusers... er, users, who stand there and read the text on the slide. That is not public speaking, it's public reading. The program also makes the most unimpressive information look impressive. True, in the hands of a good speaker, it can make a presentation more interesting but, most presentations are filled with dull, dull, dull, information. Do we really need a multi-colored pie chart to understand how many pencils are left in the office? A-A-A-a-a-a-a-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-!

Edward Ayres, Norwalk , CT 06851 , USA

I am a fan of PowerPoint, and think that those who are critical may just be a bit sensitive regarding their degree of computer literacy, which could be close to zero. With one exception, the program overall is not the problem. It remains for the user to be creative and to be aware of what turns an audience on and what bores them totally. The latter may take the form of some middle ranking public servant droning on with ( no exaggeration) 25 slides in order all displaying the famous blue background and all with 5 bullet points with yellow text. Hopeless!

My field of mineral exploration and geology has many examples of great presentations by companies at conferences. The mining industry is very high-tech in its computer use, and excellent PowerPoint presentations are blended with short sessions of video, where the viewer follows a swooping plane through the prospect area, with images popping up here and there showing drilling results obtained, results of geophysical surveys etc, all in flashing colour. Occasionally there are folk who are too smart by half, and start mixing up the wrong coloured font style with the wrong background, but one learns what works.

I enjoy the creative side, starting with a blank page. I do not use the templates provided, except for some backgrounds. I use a lot of my own scanned images, and go for things which are a bit quirky at times to maintain interest. I use two slides if there is too much text clutter on one. Sound effects and bullet points flashing in from the side can be a distraction. The dissolve function between slides is a neat touch.

I use PowerPoint as a simple yet powerful drawing package, and use it to make a lot of my technical drawings for publication in articles. There is a lot of snobbishness about insofar as printers refuse to use PowerPoint-generated diagrams because of its use of colour as RGB and not CMYK, but that is getting too technical. The point is that it is much easier to use than some of the high-end packages such as Photoshop or Illustrator etc, although it does not allow layers of images. It does however handle very large JPEG images with ease. I used it to make a home slide show on the occasion of my mother-in- law's 90th birthday - heaps of stories and photos and memorabilia creatively arranged over about 40 slides, with a little coloured handout for all the guests, and a copy of the whole presentation on CD, presented on the night with a data projector onto an adjacent white wall. Good stuff !!

Drawback: The biggest single issue I have with PowerPoint is that a slide show requires that all slides be in one orientation i.e. landscape. It does not allow one to mix both portrait and landscape slides in the one slide show. One can create a single PowerPoint slide in either orientation , but Microsoft have not yet worked out how to have them both in the one show. Feedback from readers on this point would be of interest to me. Per haps I have not read the manual enough as yet, and maybe one can do this, but I am yet to see it .

Geoff Derrick, Corinda, Qld 4075

I have used PPoint a lot for training presentations and I understand what is meant by making the presentation bland. I have found that use of photographs to explain something is needed, in addition to text. Also I think use of a blank slide or a slide with very little on it to refocus the audience back to the speaker is important. I agree that use of fancy text, fadeouts etc, is a turn-off and sometimes it helps if you switch the computer off and show a couple of transparencies.

Another danger is consultants are being hired to produce presentations for clients who want to use someone within the company to present it, rather than the consultant. This means that the speaker does not know the subject in depth and is using PowerPoint to try and make up for lack of knowledge. This is dangerous and makes for a very bland presentation as it is the bits you add to the presentation that the audience is after.

Ross Paul, Wantirna , Victoria 3152

I work as an academic till recently in Australia , but am now abroad in the UK . I used PowerPoint a little bit at home, and it's a useful tool, but here in the UK academic system, it is actually a new thing. One of my colleagues, who fancies himself as a computer whiz, organised a PowerPoint training session for our research centre. We have a very well-known French political theorist here, whose works include "Deconstruction and Pragmatism", "Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards A Radical Democratic Politics" and so forth. Her response to the session? "Err, what is 'PowerPoint'?"

Mark Harrison, Research Fellow in Chinese Studies, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster , London , UK

I am amused by the article and the negative comments many experts have. I am an expatriate Australian, now living in San Francisco . I work as a research scientist and use PowerPoint to present my data at meetings and conferences on a regular basis. When I hear other scientists present their work they almost always use PowerPoint.

Blaming PowerPoint for making people give bad talks is a bit like shooting the messenger! The reasons for giving a bad talk are entirely not about the software! I mean, if you are going to give a clear and good talk then the guidelines for doing so are always going to be the same, ie, keep the slides simple and to the point and avoid jargon.

I agree that PowerPoint has some awful templates - but the fact is, you don't have to use them. PowerPoint is useful for being universally used and simple to use. The deficiencies of PowerPoint, such as some of the in-built graphics tools, graphs and templates, can be overcome by importing graphics from other software such as SigmaPlot (for graphs) and Adobe Illustrator (for graphics).

And on a final note, using an alternative presentation software tool to PowerPoint is not going to solve the problems of a badly organised or rehearsed talk!

Danny M. Hatters, PhD, Gladstone Institutes of Cardiovascular and Neurological Diseases, University of California , San Francisco

Yes, it needed to be said: PowerPoint can be crap, and its cheezy slide templates only reinforce the fact. Having said that, I've regularly used PowerPoint since 1996, and have attended many lessons, seminars, briefings etc., where people put their PowePoint skills, or lack thereof, to public scrutiny. To be fair: it can be damned good, nay indispensable.

I was always taught that pictorial information is absorbed at about 70percent of an audience's capacity, spoken at about 30 percent and text at 10 percent. The stats are probably dodgy, but that loose order of priority should hold well for PowerPoint, and presentations in general.

At their most effective, PowerPoint presentations use clear 2D graphics inserted as a visual aid (or simple diagrams drawn in) that can be explained point by point, with straightforward animation for the points that follow. At their worst, PowerPoint is verbose and colourful virtual spaghetti soup that makes the audience yearn for bed, hard liquour or implementation of dormant plans for a campaign of industrial sabotage.

In between these extremes, mediocre presentations simply replicate the PowerPoint text into a lazy presenter's verbalising a la "follow the bouncing ball". Characteristically, Microsoft created a monster in PowerPoint by "sexing up" the software for its own marketing ambitions and pretensions. As a result, many people have used it uncritically to the point where PowerPoint files can threaten to spawn a life of their own in the manner of email joke-spam i.e., as weapons of mass PowerPoint distraction.

I remember one educational workplace where staff resorted to several gigabytes of archived PowerPoint files, many of which were only duplicates of one another, or unfinished. New staff usually copied all of the archives into their own network drive for easy access "just in case", causing the predictable network overload nightmares. Worse still, the poor-quality archived PowerPoint lesson packages remained that way, no matter how good the instructor. And of course, the inserted graphic files kind of went "missing" by the time the staff got into their lessons.

PowerPoint is not only as good as its users, but as its workplaces allow. At another place after I'd witnessed the above antics, a debarred lawyer boss forbade staff from using any graphics at all in important weekly briefings. This defeated the whole point of using the projector and PowerPoint in the first place. Given that we all had to contribute separate parts for the brief to senior management, and based on the boss's own lack of imagination and software knowledge, it seemed that PowerPoint helped a nasty and dumb boss to "dumb down" presentations into the truly prosaic, cheap and nasty.

There are some points I want to make adding to the good ones from the article, and my above-cited experience:

• The experts' advice to speak before showing the slide can sometimes be a sure way to keep the audience visually distracted from the actual spoken information. The best way I've found is to pare down the spoken info into the most succinct noun, verb or phrase as text for the accompanying slide (where you have to use text at all). The speech then elaborates and specifies in a more traditional way, with emphasis from the slide's short and simple text, either as a heading or bullets - and preferably non-jargon, non- euphemism, with basic Anglo-Saxon. But then some management cultures just won't allow that sort of Bolshie rigour!
• The experts could have added an important "don't" to the list, related to the above point: never merely reiterate in speech the displayed text. Plenty of people do, despite the effect of boring, irritating and insulting the audience. I was reassured at one work place in 2001 where some people in management actually tried to enforce that "don't" as policy. A tough job...
• I've found that a plain black slide background has the best effect, especially when complex images such as graphs, maps and animated diagrams come into play. It can be especially dramatic in a properly darkened conference room or hall. Whether Microsoft's or self-designed, patterned templates often distract from the whole presentation. Better still, black gives you the room to let the screen go empty between slides, thereby keeping to the job of actually communicating as a human, where pictures or text may be of no real use. My own presentations always contained some blank slides for that purpose, and not just for the start where everyone takes to their seats (or maybe I'm just a fashion snob who uses plain black 'cos I'm from Melbourne )!
• Animation seems to work best when its simple and without surprises: same direction of entry (I prefer 'slow fade-in' if the computer's quick enough), because the audience can try to anticipate the next point without being distracted by puerile tricks like: "Wow, that block just flew around in a circle before landing on the diagram! What will the next one do?" Ugh! And tricky cartoon animated GIF files, for example, nearly always suck. Just like with web site design where all the "bells and whistles" can annoy, bore and distract, an audience has limited bandwidth, so to speak, due to its own individual priorities and precious time. A presenter's PowerPoint self-indulgence with such gimmicks will only be appreciated by toadies or cronies in the same way that some make that extra effort to laugh at a boss's bad jokes told face-to-face. The presentation itself was probably still mediocre, or worse. And sound? Ditto. Audio files are only appropriate within the PowerPoint file if it's part of the actual information being put across. If you need sound to keep them interested and awake (with condescending bells, gongs, etc.) then the presentation has probably failed before delivery. Why not just try a cattle-prod instead?
• Another alternative software not listed in the article is the Corel Presentation suite, the use of which is also a bit more austere compared to MS PowerPoint's easily accessible spoon-feeding excesses and evil temptations.

Hope that's of some use.

Matt Davies, Doncaster East, Victoria

I am an inventor of power systems that compete with thermal power. PowerPoint is a wonderful program. By posting a PowerPoint presentation to an organisation on a CD and requesting a meeting, they can glance at it in advance to see if they even want to talk to you. If they do, their questions are knowledgable and to the point. In presentations in consecutive meetings in Australia , the US and Europe progressive upgrading of the PowerPoint presentation can be done and you can leave an updated CD as a memory jogger or follow-up which can be shared by all present at the meeting. I make all my own PowerPoint stuff.

On your dos and don'ts of PowerPoint. - the presenter must be flexible dependent on the mood of the audience. Where a useful question is asked and the answer is not known. I modify the presentation over the next few days and get back to the questioner with the new slides. I think PowerPoint is like money. It depends on how you use it.

Jolyon Nove, Managing director, Technology Universal Pty Ltd, Willougbhy, NSW

My first sustained encounter with PowerPoint was in 1996 at university (postgrad). No handouts were provided for students. I found it particularly frustrating that the slides were jam-packed with writing and dizzy transitions. To make matters worse, the lecturers flew through the presentations with absolutely no time allowed for taking the most basic notes.

In a standard lecture format I could make practical notes and re-construct the lecture later, but when PowerPoint was used the information virtually went in one eye and out the other. The course that I was doing was very marketing-oriented and I got the feeling that the lecturers were trying to outdo each other with cute visuals.

In comparison, while working for a US company, PowerPoint was used very effectively on a daily basis and CDs of the presentation were provided. These presentations have been worth their weight in gold purely because they were intelligently and correctly assembled. A good presentation is a very powerful teaching aid and a first class marketing tool. There is no room for mediocrity when creating or presenting a PowerPoint presentation.

Janine Fletcher, Melbourne , Victoria

I couldn't agree with you more! We regularly have clients ask us to design and build PowerPoint presentations for them as we are experienced in using media to communicate and educate audiences. People, regardless of experience or position, are becoming lazier. Regularly, staff who are asked to present information just cut the information from their corporate marketing brochures or web sites and past it into their PowerPoint presentations without even thinking about why they are putting the information there in the first place.

Even worse are the number of presentations which have been regurgitated in Australia from international head offices. Corporate jargon exists and even presenters or creators are regularly unable to interpret what they are actually saying. People are losing their communication skills and are hiding behind other mediums such as voice mails, text messages and email as these forms of communication are less confronting and reduce the likelihood of conflict which many people fear. There are many other things to consider about a presentation, including whether you want to teach the audience something or keep them in suspense and the timing of things such as audio, graphics, animations and video.

Andrew Dulmanis, product development co-ordinator, Kaleidio Interactive Media Pty Ltd, South Melbourne

PowerPoint, while used often in lectures, has a tendency to send students to sleep - this is because it is used in lecture theatres with 50+ students (and heating/air conditioning) where the lights are set low, so the data projector shows up against the screen, creating an ideal atmosphere for sleeping - background noise (lecturer/other students), dimmed room, and warmth. I believe that a presentation tool like PowerPoint should be used as an enhancement tool, but not solely by itself to put a point across.

David Brady, Highton , Victoria 3216

PowerPoint has become a primary medium as a vehicle for delivering business presentations. I use PowerPoint in most, if not all, business related presentations to both internal and external stakeholders.

As someone who frequently delivers presentations to groups, I would find it difficult to use an alternative method. My only criticism regarding PowerPoint's use in the business environment is that slides can become too "busy", leaving the audience perplexed as to the point(s) being communicated. This is a criticism of the user rather than the tool itself as stated by Stephen Jones.

Finally, PowerPoint is only a support tool and will never be a substitute for a presenter's ability to successfully deliver and communicate the desired message. I have sat through hundreds of PowerPoint presentations and have walked away from many, confused as to what was said and presented despite the best use of gadgetry.

Ashley Collins, Ormond , Victoria

I am a student at the University of NSW . In the school of Information Systems , PowerPoint is hideously overused. One-hour lectures can consist of up to 200 PowerPoint slides, which must then be memorised for regurgitation in exams.

PowerPoint is turning students away from lectures in droves - there are so many slides, and the lecturer will often simply read from the slide rather than explain anything. Students feel that they can achieve the same result by staying at home and reading for themselves. As a result, lectures often run at only 5 percent of the total enrolled students. Universities need to rethink the way in which they use PowerPoint - it's destroying learning.

Michelle Kemp, Kingsford, NSW

As a film maker/presenter and public speaker , I have strongly polarised views of PowerPoint. I love its power - which is rarely tapped by most users - and I hate the way it's commonly used.

I loathe and detest its use in "corporate presentations", especially when the standard templates are used (graduated blue background, dot points, Times New Roman etc.). Just like that other brilliant soporific, the family slide night, these presentations are guaranteed to put most of the audience to sleep and to ensure that those who can remain awake will not remember anything that was supposedly communicated.

Part of my aversion has to do not with PowerPoint as such, but with what it represents: the mindless adoption of so-called corporate rules of behaviour (mission statements, KPIs, outcome-obsession and all of that mumbo jumbo, put down so brilliantly by Don Watson in Death Sentence ).

I used to be so averse to using PowerPoint that I opted for another program altogether, Scala, primarily because this had a completely fresh and different 'look'. Many people commented favourably on my Scala presentations, probably without realising why they seemed so fresh. On the other hand, PowerPoint can easily be tamed and trained to become a very useful presentation tool. Some basic rules co-opted from the world of video and TV really make a difference:

• Select a black background
• Select a non-serif font
• Avoid dot points like the plague
• Choose a small number of beautiful and relevant graphics to use as full-screen backgrounds
• Never use glitzy transitions or sounds - the audience should be engrossed in the fascinating things you're saying rather than the special effects
• Use simple cuts or fades between slides
• Use the minimum number of slides possible - will anyone remember the detailed content of a 55-slide presentation?
• Hand out a printed copy of the detail of your presentation after you've finished (otherwise the audience will be reading it instead of listening to you) and use your allotted time to speak bout the content, rather than merely reading it.

Overall, to damn PowerPoint outright would be most unfair - it's a very cleverly designed piece of software that, unfortunately, is often used in a most unintelligent way.

Dr David Smith, Director, imaginACTION Pty Ltd, Balwyn North, Victoria

I use PowerPoint, and find it an invaluable tool in presenting and training. My area of expertise is in training electronic security installers and sales people in "Security Fundamentals" - alarms, detectors, how they work and where to put them.

However, I do go to great lengths not to use Microsoft's standard selection of backgrounds or sounds. These tend to have a very "contrived" look about them, and don't stimulate the imagination as much as "imported" files do. Real pictures "invite" the audience to participate, and ask questions.

I have been using PowerPoint extensively for around 10 years now, and have recently finished a 220 slide presentation on "Security Fundamentals", complete with internal hyperlinks and audio.

As this article rightly points out, Power Point should only be used to reinforce what the lecturer is discussing. Animation is important, but should be used with predictability in the presentation. Constant changes, from images flying from the left, right, up, down and so on confuses and tends to distract the audience too much. It should be interesting, but not used as the message alone.

On the other hand, slide after slide, line after line of static text is just too painful to watch. Another common fault of presenters is talking to the screen, and reading off the presentation. PowerPoint is a great tool, but in the wrong hands can lead to the "short term coma" syndrome. Use the power wisely, Luke.

David Handley, Melbourne , Victoria

I've often seen excellent speakers reduced to mere slide presentations, all due to PowerPoint. I've given talks for the last 12 years without it and, what's more, I have full connection with my audience because I'm not looking at a slide show, but I keep seeing what my audience is saying and thinking. I think using slides is actually lazy. And audiences have a saying about it, speakers who use it are giving: "death by power point" (or death by boredom). Public servants are the worst offenders.

David Newton, Dandenong North , Victoria

We use PowerPoint for almost all services at my church, St. Hilary's Anglican in Kew , as do most large and contemporary churches. It's used for displaying song words (usually one verse or chorus per slide), for advertising upcoming events, for prayers said as a congregation, and for the sermon. The standard slide templates are never used, thankfully. Most slides just have a plain blue background. The use of PowerPoint has become an integral part of the service and so the PowerPoint operator has a very important job. It's very obvious when they get things wrong or lose concentration.

The use of PowerPoint has been a great boon for the manufacturers of data projectors. Our church owns at least three of these, with two being used at a time in most services. Thankfully, the cost of projectors in coming down but they are still quite expensive to purchase and maintain.

Miranda Starkey, Blackburn , Victoria

Two observations:

· PowerPoint is simply appalling when the presenter uses the slides as speech notes i.e. they read the slides verbatim. I think such approaches should require the speaker to preface the presentation with "for those of you who can't read I will now read to you what is on each slide"

· I was doing a round of presentations using PowerPoint and on some occasions the facilities were not up to scratch. I abandoned the slide show, photocopied the slides and we all sat around a large table. The result was a meeting which was much more interactive - people were much more attentive and took more notes on the hard copy slides provided to them. The conclusion reached was that by having face a screen they are far more likely to disengage than if the presentation is formatted as a meeting.

Tony Hunter, Paddington, NSW

I don't agree that PowerPoint is necessarily a tool that results in lower levels of analysis than would otherwise have occurred - the "dumbing down" hypothesis. In some ways, the use of a tool like this requires that the speaker organise his/her material into logical chunks; more internal organisation of the material to be presented is required rather than less.

PowerPoint is a tool that is much better suited to the lecture format and the presentation of research results (including graphs and tables) than to the essay-format speech or sermon. It has one major advantage over the use of acetate overheads (or slides); it encourages the use of large fonts and easy-to-read formats. There is no excuse now for a speaker to present a table with tiny printing that nobody can read. This used to generally be the case at conferences. It encourages simplification in presentation, but that does not necessarily mean simplification of intellectual content. There is no reason why a skilled speaker should not present complex ideas using PowerPoint as a back-up.

I agree that the over-use of dynamic presentation (e.g., moving words and images) in PowerPoint can become vey irritating and distracting. It is not true that PowerPoint is responsible for sameness in format, however. It is an advance on no format at all, which was usually the case using overheads. I find PowerPoint very useful in an academic context and use it frequently.

Dr Yvonne Wells, Research Fellow, Lincoln Centre for Ageing and Community Care Research, Australian Institute for Primary Care, La Trobe University, Victoria

Well, perhaps word-processors and websites should be destroyed too, since they enable production and dissemination of content from writers who make completely unsubstantiated and mathematically unlikely comments like "Trillions of PowerPoint slides are shown across the world each year". That would mean on average every single person on the planet would have had to produce hundreds of slides.

The article is lazy, poorly-structured tabloid journalism - and this is true whether it is on paper, slide or mud slate. Since the newspaper's website displays so many spelling errors (presumably because no one can figure out how to proof-read or use a spell-checker) I guess that's Microsoft's fault too (?)

Both Tufte and Watson should know better than to "blame the tool". The writer Sue Cant should recant.

Mike Williams, Enmore, NSW

My consultancy specialises in media training executives and I've used PowerPoint for 15 years or so. In the early days it was to print out black and white slides on film and use them on an overhead projector. We also ran our video examples from VHS tape into a TV set on-site. When I look back on those days I cringe but there wasn't a better solution in that price bracket.

Today, we use PowerPoint to deliver a full multimedia presentation that can last up to two hours in our media training workshops. Clients love it because it contains video, audio, text and graphics which all help to liven up the presentation and grab and maintain their attention. We love it because the video and audio examples run from within PowerPoint and we don't have to shut down the presentation and fire up other sources. Also, it enables us to quickly save video examples on our editing package and insert them into the relevant PowerPoint slides - updating the presentation is easy and many clients give us very positive feedback on how up-to-date our media examples are. We make sure we don't go overboard with all the different transitions and we don't use audio on the slides, other than the audio examples we have of "good" and "bad" media performances!

Graham Kelly, Wantirna South , Victoria

I personally find that PowerPoint is the only Microsoft product I find intuitive (which is a pretty scary admission really). Having spent a considerable time being a member of Rostrum, an organisation promoting better communication skills, I offer these comments. I thought the article was particularly accurate, inasmuch as the criticism levelled against the software was really about poor presentation skills and not about poor software.

I have personally used the software both at Rostrum and also for presentations for class during a course. As with any speaking aid like a whiteboard, OHP etc. its use will not carry a speech. Given that a picture can mean a thousand words and appropriate relevant animations can save ten thousand, why talk people to death, why not use PowerPoint?

A technique I used to make sure I had audience attention was to insert black blanking slides as appropriate during my presentations so I held the floor, not the software. Sadly, we live in an age craving for instantness. Instant tradesmen, instant weight loss and instant public speaking are all things we dream of, constantly searching for the number or pill with the promise of "now". I suspect that some people have unfairly appended the hope of "now" to PowerPoint. Being disappointed, they've then been unfairly critical of the software. I trust this feedback is of use and congratulations on a really good article.

Robert Cook, Nunawading , Victoria

When will speakers be happy just to be speakers - to stand up in front of us and tell it like it is?

PowerPoint is a method of presenting information. If this is what someone wants to do, there is a much more efficient method - write things down and fax, email, post it or hand it out. Why waste an audience's time when they could be working, and why waste all that money on time and equipment preparing and showing the presentation?

In my experience as a consultant and trainer in this field, speakers actually cause confusion by displaying words on the screen. Naturally the audience reads the words and thinks about them. I doubt very much that what audience members think is what the speaker is going to say. So by using PowerPoint a speaker gets the audience to think what he or she is not saying. That seems crazy. Microsoft may be experts when it comes to computers, but they sure as hell don't know much about communication..

But to be positive, PowerPoint is very useful for statistics, lists, flowcharts and maps. So are handouts - but they're non-trendy, old-fashioned pieces of paper which people can take away and look at again and again. Thanks for such a well researched and balanced article on this important topic.

Roger Fry, managing director, Roger Fry and Co., East Melbourne, Victoria

PowerPoint only diminishes the quality, reasoning and analysis of information; it is used as a tool where quality, reasoning and analysis of information has not been applied in the first place. One of the biggest barriers to good presentation is Dead Level Abstraction. One of the most useful aids to good presentation is The Minto Pyramid Principle. Trust me on this because I have found I need all the help I can get!

Dead Level Abstraction
S.I. Hayakawa was probably better known as a US Senator and controversial academic. He should be remembered for his excellent book for undergraduates named originally Language in Action. In one chapter Hayakawa issues dire warnings about the problems of Dead Level Abstraction. Here people seem to remain stuck at certain levels of the abstraction and can get involved in endless meaningless conversation.

Hayakawa explains the process of abstracting as the process of observation in which we leave things out. This is an essential process if we are to invent abbreviations to identify objects such as house and cow which can be discussed.

He illustrates his theory with the Abstraction Ladder, starting with the object called Bessie which is a cow and stepping up the rungs of the ladder to livestock, farm assets, asset, wealth. He explains how the process of abstracting is an indispensable convenience if we are to make discussion possible.

Some people get stuck at low levels of abstraction, others get stuck at high levels. At low levels people can go on indefinitely, never able to pull their facts together to frame a generalisation that would give a meaning to the facts. The language used by people stuck at high levels of abstraction their language remains permanently in the clouds.

He goes on:
It is obvious then, then, that interesting speech and writing, as well as clear thinking and psychological well-being, require the constant interplay of higher-level and lower- level abstractions, and the constant interplay of the verbal levels with the nonverbal (object) levels. S.I. Hayakawa (Language in Thought and Action, Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich)

Minto's Pyramid Principle

PowerPoint helps overcome this problem but does not explain why. Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle explains what has to be done and why.

Barbara Minto was the first female consultant hired by McKinsey. In 1996 she was transferred to London , to concentrate on developing the writing skills of their growing European staff. In 1973 she started her own business Minto International Inc. It specialises in teaching the Minto Pyramid Principle to people whose major training is in business or the professions, but whose jobs require them to produce complex reports, analyses, memorandum or presentations.

Her basic idea is that any presentation should be prearranged into a pyramid of ideas. Ideas in the presenters inductive or deductive thought processes are grouped into small clusters that support the main thesis.

In the inductive grouping, each thought below supports the idea above. If one lower level idea is false, the main thesis may still be true.

In the deductive grouping each idea leads logically to the next to support the main thesis. If one idea is false the main thesis is weakened or collapses. Exploring the horizontal and vertical relationships leads to establishing logical order. To start from practically nothing, try top down first. If you have ideas but they are not fully developed try a bottom up approach.

Of course there is much more but this gives a taste of her contribution to structured thinking and how it can improve PowerPoint presentations. (Barbara Minto, The Minto Pyramid Principle, Minto National Inc.)

D.R. Connochie, Manly Vale, NSW

The problem lies not in the stars and the other whiz-bang effects of PowerPoint. It lies in the reality that most speakers are just afraid to take centre stage. They are afraid to stand and perform in front of an audience. They find it easier to take refuge in PowerPoint.

Consequently, in some cases, the speaker is only a disembodied voice in the dark, while the lights are focused on the PowerPoint screen. In many cases, the speaker has his back to the audience and is even reading the slides to them. The speaker should be the "show" and PowerPoint should be used merely as an aid - a visual aid.

Used wisely, it can provide structure, clarity and emphasis to a presentation. Used indiscriminately, it not only leads to boredom and confusion - but the real crime - is the failure to communicate the required information to the audience. Therefore, the argument should be about the inappropriate use of PowerPoint, rather than damning it altogether.

Augustine Zycher (Ms), Presentation Strategies Melbourne , Victoria

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