Tips For Making Better PowerPoint Slides General Presentation Guidelines Plan your presentation in an outline format. This will make it easy for the audience to follow along giving them reference points along the way. Remember that your slides are only speaker notes and not your full talk. If you put too may words on a slide your audience will be reading your talk instead of listening to you. The use of progressive disclosures (also known as builds or reveals) are very helpful for organizing your main points in the mind of your audience. Use them as you begin each new main point and again at the end of your presentation to summarize all the main points.   Text and Formatting Try to limit the number of lines of text to six to ten lines per slide. Don't make the text smaller to fit it in. Instead, try to think about how you might be able to spread the same information over several slides. This will help the audience to better comprehend the material presented on each slide. Slides can be made more readable with the proper amount of spacing between the lines and paragraphs. Multiple lines of long text can be hard to read. If you can't break it up onto more slides try adding in extra line spacing. It is better to reduce the font size by a point or two than to reduce the spacing to less than normal. Use mixed upper and lower case text. For example: DON"T USE ALL CAPS! IT LOOKS LIKE YOU ARE SHOUTING AND IS HARD TO READ! Use Mixed Case for Titles. Use sentence case for body text. Always use tabs to align text. Never use spaces to align text! This is because most fonts are proportionally spaced so the letter "W" is much wider than the letter " I". It may look aligned on your screen but only tabs will insure they are lined up exactly. Use drop shadows to make the text pop out giving it a more three dimensional look and making it easier to read. Center the text on the slide horizontally and vertically. Slides with the text lower than center appear to be falling off the screen.   Colors and Backgrounds Choose colors that are easy to read and pleasing to the eye. Also try to limit the number of colors on a slide and in an entire presentation. Dark colors tend to recede and light colors stand out. Therefore it is best to use a dark background with light text for slides. For the printed page however use a light background and dark text. Keep the background simple. Too flashy a background will draw attention away from you and your message as well as making it difficult to read the slide. Try using a background with a solid color, subtle texture or a gradient sweep fading from one color to another. That will give a nice touch to your slides without overwhelming the text or the audience for that matter. Limit the number of colors in a slide to two or three that work well together. Also, keep the background the same or very similar for each slide in your presentation.