Presentation documents and writing for non-writers

A slide is not a document. Creating slides for your presentation and writing a supporting document (such as the takeaway handout) are two different things. Yes, I know. This is obvious. But how many people do you know who make a "handout" for their presentation by printing out their slides (six slides per page)?  When we attempt to "kill two birds with one stone" and generate slides that will also serve as handouts or a "document," we often end up with dreadful supporting slides for the talk and ambiguous, ineffective handouts for the takeaway document. Two weeks after the presentation these papers — with their promising coversheets but filled with small images of bulletpoint slides — can be painful to "read" (if they are ever read at all).

Author John Scalzi offers good writing tips for professionals who are not necessarily professional writers. The article is short, sweet, and excellent. If you have time, there are some good nuggets of wisdom in the comments section as well, currently at 146! (The exclamation mark proves, I suppose, what a hack writer I am. My apologies.)

OK. So the creation of presentation visuals, the delivery of a talk, and the writing of supporting documents are different animals. But there are some commonsense principles which apply to writing and presenting. A few of Scalzi's writing tips (listed in bold below), can be applied to the art of presenting as well. Here are four from his list of ten tips.

"Front-load your point." Make your point, then make your case. You do not want your audience (or your reader) saying to themselves "Where the @#&^%! is this going!?"

"Don't use words you don't really know." Sometimes people use big words to impress or sound credible or smart, etc. Whether it's writing or speaking, never try to impress. When we try to impress, we are thinking about ourselves and not about our audience. We must speak in a style that is natural, conversational, free of jargon, and clear. For example, instead of "I suffered a massive, humongous intel failure" how about "I screwed up"? (The level of your informality, of course, depends on your unique situation.)

"Read people who write well." I "learned jazz" by listening to and watching great jazz players. We can learn how to be a better presenters, in part, by watching and studying the famous and not-so-famous accomplished speakers and presenters of today and the past.

"When in doubt, simplify." I so love this point by Scalzi that I'm quoting almost the entire passage here (item number nine in the list of ten):

"Worried you're not using the right words? Use simpler words. Worried that your sentence isn't clear? Make a simpler sentence. Worried that people won't see your point? Make your point simpler. Nearly every writing problem you have can be solved by making things simpler.

This should be obvious, but people don't like hearing it because there's the assumption that simple = stupid. But it's not true; indeed, I find from personal experience that the stupidest writers are the ones whose writing is positively baroque in form. All that compensating, you know. Besides, I'm not telling you to boil everything down to "see spot run" simplicity. I am telling you to make it so people can get what you're trying to say."

                                                              — John Scalzi

Yes indeed. Simple and good writing. Simple and effective presentation. Useful, simple and beautiful design. These things are neither "easy" or "simple" to achieve for the creator. But the reader, listener/observer, and user will be forever thankful for the effort.

Also checkout Hints for Revising by Brian Marick. Good tips there. Thanks to Coding Horror for these two great links.

Comments

[Ben Martin]

...positively baroque in form??? That reads like he's violating his own principle. :-)

[Berin Loritsch]

It sounds like a good pun to me, because its obvious that its broke.

[Alan Nelson]

Professionals need trust only one resource: Strunk and White's Elements of Style (now in a beautiful new edition). The best advice therein: "Omit needless words."

At Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594200696/sr=8-1/qid=1140233279/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-3912515-7637710?%5Fencoding=UTF8

[Matthew Stibbe]

This was a particularly helpful reference. I went through Scalzi's points and agree with them. I wanted to add a couple of recommendations (with links to explanations on my blog, Bad Language):
1) Short words are best. http://www.badlanguage.net/?p=44
2) Avoid jargon and buzzwords. http://www.badlanguage.net/?p=36

[met]

I feel I simplify things too much. I have seen people who cloud facts a bit (and then clear them) get more credit.

I am still trying to find my way out of this problem - so I can't be more clearer than this.

Anyone experienced anything similar?

[Roy Jacobsen]

I may get fragged for this, but here goes:
The Elements of Style is good, but overrated.

There, I said it. Now to justify it.

Much of the advice is rock solid (the aforementioned "Omit needless words" is just one example).

Some is good but unsupported by detail. For example, they advise "Choose a suitable design and hold to it," but don't give any information about what a suitable design is.

Finally, on some points, they are just plain wrong. For example, they rail against beginning a sentence with "Hopefully." Fortunately, just as there's nothing wrong with beginning a sentence with words like "fortunately," "clearly" and "sadly," there's nothing wrong with starting a sentence with "hopefully." (If you want to argue this point, I've gone into detail about it here: http://rmjacobsen.squarespace.com/notebook/2005/11/9/rules-that-dont-exist-starting-a-sentence-with-hopefully.html.)

In short, TEoS is a good reference to have, but not The Writing Guide To End All Writing Guides.

[Virginia]

What software would you recommend for building 21st century proposals and presentations?

[Drue Kataoka]

Perhaps listening to great jazz can help one write better too.

Count Basie's spare hand-- into your ear -- and out your fingertips!

I always paint with music.