Using Bullets

8.1 Avoid having bullets on every slide

A presentation that is essentially a series of bullets leads to what is humorously known as death by PowerPoint, which in Wikipedia’s definition is a criticism of slide-based presentations referring to a state of boredom and fatigue induced by information overload during presentations such as those created by the Microsoft application PowerPoint.

8.2 Choose the most appropriate type of bullet

Always use the standard bullet (•) unless the items

8.3 Limit yourself to six bullets per slide

When you are giving lists keep them short. Six bullets are generally more than enough. And you only need to talk about a couple of them (e.g., the top two).

An exception is when you are not going to talk about any of the bullets but your aim is simply to show that, for example, your instrument has a lot of features, or that your research group has been involved in a lot of projects. Such features or projects can thus all be preceded by a bullet, or can simply appear as an unbulletted list. In such cases you do not need to read/say anything on the slide.

8.4 Keep to a maximum of two levels of bullets

The slide below has three levels of bullets, which generally leads to messy slides.

As you can see from the revised version, you can reduce the bullets to one level

by

•changing the title of the slide from Discussion to Optimization Goals

•incorporating the third level into the second level (Save CPU use for multiple applications). Alternatively you could delete the third level and simply give this information verbally

8.5 Do not use a bullet for every line in your text

The default settings of PowerPoint and other applications encourage you to use a bullet before every line of text.

Note how the bullets in the original version below have been misused in this slide from a presentation on detecting faults in a magnet motor.

The first line (Two main faults . . .) introduces a list of two items. So only the second and third lines need bullets. The fourth line is not a fault.

8.6 Choose the best order for the bullets

The normal practice is to order the bullets in terms of which ones you will be commenting on. Given that there is generally no need to comment on all the bullets in a list, it is best to put the ones you intend to talk about at the top of the list.

Sometimes you may have a list of bullets and you intend to make one general overall comment about them, without commenting on any of them individually. In such cases it is best to put them in alphabetical order to highlight that they are not in order of importance. Alternatively, you can say, “By the way these bullets are in no particular order.”

8.7Introduce items in a list one at a time only if absolutely necessary

Presentation applications allow you to introduce items in a list one at a time. This can be useful if it is crucial to delay information, for example when giving your conclusions in order to get the audience to focus on one conclusion at a time.

Otherwise, show all the items at once and give the audience three to five seconds to absorb them before you start talking. This means that

•you don’t have to keep hitting the mouse to introduce the next item. Your hands are thus free and you can move away from the laptop and keep your eyes focused on the audience

•the audience doesn’t have to constantly keep changing where they are looking (you or your slides), and they are not waiting for the next item to appear. They can do all their reading at once

•you won’t inadvertently introduce two items at the same time (and thus lose the whole point of delaying the information)

8.8 Use verbs not nouns

Where possible, use verbs both in the introductory sentence and in the bullets themselves. Using verbs, rather than nouns, reduces the number of words you need.

8.9 Be grammatical

Using the least amount of words is generally a good tactic. But what you write has to be grammatical and the words have to be in the right order.

Make sure the first word in each bullet is grammatically the same:

•an infinitive (e.g., study/to study)

•an -ing form (e.g., studying)

•a verb (e.g., studies/will study)

•a noun (e.g., researcher)

•an adjective or past participle (e.g., good, better, improved)

The grammar in the slide in the first column below may initially look correct, but it isn’t.