Slides need headlines, not labels

Feb 1

4 min read

Slides often collect undigested information. Headline sentences drive clear thinking and action.

When we create slides, we’re often just collecting information. Something about the slide format dulls our thinking. We don’t always take time to consider how this information will change the audience’s minds or help them take action. Nor whether the ideas are properly thought through. In a famous memo, Jeff Bezos wrote:

But slides can be used in better ways. One thing that really helps is to start each slide from a sentence. Sentences require verbs, which force us to say something about a topic. Not just grouping facts but taking some standpoint; driving some action.

I recorded a video on this a few years ago and I think it’s worth watching still. (If you prefer reading to watching a video, I’ve included my full narration notes and some still images below.)

My narration notes and some useful links

Slide-based presentations have been common at work for decades, and it seems people have been complaining about them for that long too. The complaints aren't always about the medium, but the way it's used. People fear the wall of text on overly wordy slides, and there's a lot of advice to reduce the number of words.

But what if the blanket approach to reduce words is making presentations worse? We see a lot of slides that have just a single word or phrase as the title. They're mostly noun phrases – that is they name an idea, a thing or a category. And what happens with that is that we're tempted to simply collect information that belongs with that thing. And we may not really process that data in a way that helps the audience, or even really helps us think through what we're saying in a connected way, a way that will reveal any gaps in our thinking and improve our points.

Let's say I want to make a point that relates to the coffee consumed in an office. So as I'm using some data to back up my point, I just call my slide "coffee data". And then I add the information I'm going to rely on.

I kind of know how I'm going to use the information when speaking, but to anyone else, it's not obvious. Unlike the coffee, the information is not well digested. And there's other stuff about sales, that doesn't seem to connect.

Some of the sub-bullets seem to relate to their parents more, but are they next in sequence, are they dependencies? You might say, well, that's all up to me as a speaker to put together, but the danger is that just as it looks undigested to the viewer, I myself may not have properly thought through my argument.

What if we put a sentence in the title instead? Something like “Stronger coffee could improve sales”? (By the way, I hope it’s clear that this example is facetious!)

In English and many other languages a sentence requires a verb, which commits us to saying something about the topic of the slide.

Now the title of the slide states the main point. And it encourages me to restructure the rest of the slide – and hence sequence my own thoughts – to back up this point. It's not just me, there’s a school of thought that all scientific presentations should follow an “assertion-evidence” pattern, with sentence headlines.

Michael Alley, Penn State: https://www.assertion-evidence.com

You don’t have to stick with the title you come up first. You may well want to change it as you refine your argument.

In this fictitious example, buying better coffee could also be a way to appreciate employees, not just a sneaky way to stimulate activity! So the title can change.

There are still lots of words on the slide of course. This slide, like so many, ends up as a combination of a document and something to present. But it is better than the the original one: it states a real argument and backs it up with reasons. And there are verbs!

Although using sentences as slide headers has helped me and others, the main point I’m making here isn’t primarily about presenting better but thinking better. There are quite strong debates about how tools such as PowerPoint are useful to help us think, and I’ll unpack those more. But more to say that wherever we pull together our thinking, the format of a sentence helps a lot.

What if we find we don't have much to say about the topic, in reality? That's very good in a way. It shows that the process is working. Of course, we have to go back to an earlier stage. We may well find that other formats such as drawing help. But we have avoided wasting our time, and probably that of others, by not saying much, not thinking much, not changing much.

After all, decisions are made in a changing environment. They have to survive a changing environment. If somehow we operated in a static external world, noun phrases might be enough. But we don't, and by the time we form our rationales, we absolutely need verbs to paint our interactions with the world. Joe Moran's book is about life itself, and I think he'd be disappointed to see it reduced to business. He's definitely covering more. But business is a part of life. I'll leave you with a final quote:

One reply I got when I shared the video on Twitter was the single word “counterpoint”, with a link to a presentation coach telling people to use very few visible words on slides.

Of course it can work well to have few or no words on slides. Sometimes it’s better to present an idea using no slides at all!

But what I’m saying in the video is that we should not be fooled by the slide format into not saying anything meaningful. So many slides have just a noun as a label, and a loose grouping of noun phrases on bullets. Whether you show that text or just narrate it, it still doesn’t say much.

So how about this: if you’re using any slides, write a sentence headline for each one so you know you’re making a real point. And then delete the sentence if you like. It’s done its job!

Have you tried using only sentence headlines in slides? Do they help?