SKILLS FOR CREATING THE POWER-POINT PRESENTATION

SKILLS FOR CREATING THE POWER-POINT PRESENTATION

The objective of creating power-point presentation is to ensure and achieve a uniform standard of presentation. The look of the slides should also be consistent and of uniform standard. It involves the followings:

(1) Using slide master
The users should be familiar with the facility of „Slide Master‟ in the Power-point software. It is much like the sliding scales used on a drawing board as it helps to get X-coordinates and Y-coordinates correctly. Besides, it can draw many types and sizes of boxes for writing in properly aligned and sized matter.

(2) Editing master title and style
Before preparing slides, they must choose the title and the text styles. These can be defined for various levels as a number of levels, as below, are available:

First level BIG
Second level NOT SO BIG
Third Level SMALL
Fourth level SMALLER
Fifth level SMALLEST

Usually three or four levels are adequate for a speaker.
Once the size and style of „font‟ is chosen, speakers should stick to it for all the slides on a subject matter.
Font size and style are very important for preparing good slides in this software.

(3) Using graphics, tables and charts
Graphics, table and charts are relatively new facilities but are being used increasingly in power-point presentation. These can enhance the quality of presentation if following „Dos‟ and „Don‟ts‟ are observed:

(i) Do‟s
 Ensure that graphics etc relate to the topic
 Make graphics etc secondary to the material
 Place graphics etc properly in the text

(ii) Don‟ts
 Don‟t use animations
 No background „colours‟ or „fills‟ should be used
 Don‟t let graphics etc overwhelm the presentation

(4) Watching grammar and punctuations

The software has many features that help to achieve good quality slides:
 Use online dictionary
 Use software for „spell check‟ with some reservations as most software check for American spellings whereas we, in India, follow British spellings.
 Use writing style guide or sentence construction software – it is a good help.
 Use thesaurus for selecting the correct synonyms
 Use the power of punctuations to embellish your language

(5) Using guides and rulers
These two facilities in Power-point software need to be learnt and used properly.

(i) Guides
 Setting up guides is easy – they help in aligning text and graphics
 Guides make presentation seamless

(ii) Rulers
Rulers allow accurate measurement of spaces, boxes etc