The Most Annoying PowerPoint Offenses
No matter what a person does in life, it is likely that they have had to give a PowerPoint presentation at some point during it. Whether a student or a professional, PowerPoint is a tool that most people experience at least once. Most times it is a very effective tool – as long as it is used properly. When one has to give a lecture or a presentation to a group of people, PowerPoint can be a worthy friend to have; it seems that there is nothing worse than a lecture presented monotonously with no graphics or visual aids at all to accompany it. However, I believe that there is indeed something worse than a presentation without a PowerPoint – a lecture with a bad PowerPoint. In my opinion, the top five most annoying offenses that a PowerPoint can display are an awful color scheme, too much animation, the wrong font, a lot of spelling and grammar errors, and too many words being placed on the slides.
When making a PowerPoint presentation, one wants it to stand out. No one wants to look at a boring presentation, so often people try to compensate for this and they end up over-compensating. This results in a PowerPoint presentation with clashing colors or a background that is too bright or busy for any of the information presented on the slides to be read and interpreted. If people have to strain their eyes to read the text or discern a graph on the slides, there is a problem with the color scheme. It is best to choose a simple theme rather than an outlandish one.
When I was in grade school, it was acceptable and even expected for a PowerPoint presentation to have the most up to date animation possible. As you move into higher levels of school or professional work places, animation is not expected or welcomed in many cases. It makes the presentation seem childish and over the top. As with the color choice, it seems that the further you go in professional presentations, the wiser it is to stick with a simple PowerPoint.
When one is considering a graphic theme for their PowerPoint, they must also consider the font choice they will make as well as the color choice. A proper font is a must have for any presentation. Font that is too large, too small, or too hard to read provides a bad presentation experience to the audience, who is too intently focused on discerning what the text says that they do not pay attention to the idea and reason behind the presentation in the first place.
PowerPoint presentations are something that are normally shared with at least one other person aside from the speaker, but usually something that is shared with large groups of other people. As such, it is important for the PowerPoint presentation to look as professional as possible – otherwise it reflects badly upon the speaker. One of the most offensive things that someone can do with a PowerPoint presentation is to not care about spelling or grammar and instead provide a sloppy and extremely non-professional presentation. Misspelled words and glaring punctuation errors distract the listeners from the main message and should be guarded against.
What I believe to be one of the most annoying things that are too common with PowerPoint presentations is the continual overcrowding of the slides. People tend to get nervous talking in front of groups of people, so they decide to simply pack each slide with a lot of information and recite the lines instead of actually presenting something. The listener is then forced to read entirely too much while the speaker is reading the exact same thing. It is monotonous and does not provide a good experience to the listener. A PowerPoint presentation should have just the main ideas or graphics on the slides and the speaker should know the topic well enough to cover the presentation. I like to think of the slides as an outline for something I am going to talk about, not a book that I will read off of.
While a PowerPoint presentation is a good tool that can be used to break up a string of plain lectures with no graphics or visual aids, it is important to remember to use this tool wisely. A PowerPoint presentation can be a great asset, but if a person is to make some of the annoying mistakes discussed here, the asset turns more into a hindrance.
