A short presentation at work, school or a community meeting: slides, numbers and questions
Give a five- to fifteen-minute talk with the main message first, slides that support it, numbers the audience can follow, every visual described aloud, and the questions you expect.
- Start here: the essentials
- What the talk is for, and how to ask for a decision
- Slides, or none
- Presenting so everyone can follow
- Numbers the audience can hold
- Questions from the room
- Bullets, sentence headlines and presenting as a group
- See it: Sam's proposal to the neighborhood association
- Practice: build one presentation on paper
- Your talk
- Check your work
- Knowledge check and scenario
Start here Essentials
A short presentation needs one message, a request if you have one, slides that earn their place, and answers to the questions you expect. Do these four, in about 45 minutes, and the talk is built.
- Write the one message the group must remember, and put it first. One sentence, said in your first breath (what the talk is for).
- If you are asking for something, write what, what it costs and by when. Money or time, and the date a decision is needed (how to ask for a decision).
- Keep only the slides that show something you cannot say as well, and plan to describe each aloud. Use none if nothing qualifies (slides, or none and presenting so everyone can follow).
- Write the three questions you are most likely to get, and answer each in three sentences. Say each answer out loud once (questions from the room).
Minimum time: about 45 minutes. Done when: the plan sheet's main point is the first line of the talk, every slide is described in your notes, and three likely questions have answers.
What the talk is for, and how to ask for a decision Understand
A short presentation, in this manual, is a talk of about five to fifteen minutes to a group that has come for something other than you: a work team, a school board, a congregation, a club or a neighborhood association. It has one of two jobs. It informs the group, or it asks the group for something. Most presentations in these rooms do the second, even when they do not say so, and the talk is easier to build once you know which job it has.
Both jobs rest on the same idea from Shaping a short talk: one main point, said in one sentence, that the talk opens with and returns to at the close. In a presentation we call that sentence the main message. The CDC's Clear Communication Index, a scoring sheet for health materials, describes it as "the one thing the audience must remember," and scores material higher when that message comes first (CDC's Clear Communication Index score sheet). The writing center at the University of North Carolina gives the same advice for speeches: state the point right away, say how you will support it, and repeat the points that matter, because listeners get one chance to take the talk in (UNC Writing Center's Speeches handout). Convention
That means the order is the reverse of a report. A report builds toward its finding. A talk opens with the finding, then gives the reasons, then repeats the finding. The audience hears the point while it is fresh, and the reasons arrive already attached to a conclusion.
Asking for a decision
When the talk asks a group to approve, fund, join or change something, reduce the request to three facts and say them before the reasons. Our convention
| Say this | What it covers | Why it comes before the reasons |
|---|---|---|
| What you are asking for | The action, in a sentence a member could repeat to someone who missed the meeting | Listeners judge reasons differently once they know what the reasons are for. |
| What it costs | Money, time or effort, as one number or one plain amount, plus what it buys | An unstated cost becomes the first question, and it crowds out the rest of the talk. |
| By when | The date a decision is needed, and who decides it | It tells the group whether it is being asked to decide today or to think about it. |
Then give your reasons: two or three, each with one fact or one picture, and then restate the request in the words you started with. The method here comes from the thesis-first advice above. A university course on persuasive speaking covers the larger subject of arguing a case (University of Washington's Dynamic Public Speaking on Coursera); this manual keeps only the part a short talk needs, which is a clear request and its reasons. It does not cover debate or sales.
Who decides matters as much as what is asked. In a club or an association, the group usually decides by a vote on a motion, and the bylaws may say whether a vote can happen at the same meeting as the presentation. Ask the chair or the secretary before the meeting, so you can say "the vote is next month" or "the vote follows this talk" with confidence. Decisions and minutes covers how a group decides and records what it decided. Ask the authority
The time you have
A ten-minute slot is not ten minutes of talk. Ask the organizer whether questions come out of the slot or after it, whether the changeover and the introduction are counted, and who keeps time (Saying yes has the questions). Then set a word budget with the timing tool. At 130 words a minute, a planning figure that sits inside the 120 to 150 that speaking guides give, ten minutes holds about 1,300 words. A talk with slides needs fewer, because each slide takes a few seconds to change and describe, and your own measured rate replaces the 130. Test it
The advice on slides and numbers in this chapter comes from research on instruction and from guidance on written health materials. Applying it to a ten-minute talk to a group is our inference, and no study we found tests it on talks like yours. Treat it as a reasoned default, and let your own rehearsals and your audience's reactions overrule it.
Slides, or none Understand
A slide is a presentation aid: something the audience looks at while you speak. A slide earns its place when it shows something you cannot say as well: a map, a photo, a graph, a diagram, a short list of three items the group will need to see together. If a slide only repeats what you are saying, it adds a second thing to read while the audience is trying to listen.
Research on how people learn from words and pictures gives the idea a name. Richard Mayer's review of the evidence for designing multimedia instruction (American Psychologist, 2008) sets out ten principles, and teaching centers summarize five that matter for slides (Harvard's Center for Health Decision Science summary; University of Washington's principles for teaching with multimedia).
| Principle | What it says | What it means for a slide |
|---|---|---|
| Coherence | Leave out material that does not serve the point | Cut the decorative image, the logo on every slide and the fact that is only interesting |
| Signaling | Highlight the main ideas | Make the one thing to notice the biggest, darkest or circled thing |
| Redundancy | Narration works better with no duplicate text on the screen | Do not put your spoken words on the slide and then read them |
| Spatial contiguity | Put words near the picture they explain | Label a chart on the chart, not in a caption at the bottom |
| Temporal contiguity | Show the picture while you talk about it | Change to the slide as you start the point, and change away when you finish |
Research finding The third column is how we apply the principles to a talk, not wording from the sources; the University of Washington page says nothing about speeches, and the application is an inference (see the Limits box above).
Our default for a slide
A default is a place to start, and you change it when your room or your material asks. Our default
- No script on the slide. Hamilton College's speaking center says to keep full sentences off slides so the audience listens instead of reads (Hamilton College's guide to using slides). Mayer's redundancy principle points the same way.
- One image or one graph per slide. The same Hamilton guide says so. A second graph is a second slide.
- Few words, large and near what they describe. The open textbook Stand Up, Speak Out sets one rule above the rest: every person in the room must be able to see or hear the aid (Stand Up, Speak Out on presentation aids). Check from the back row of the actual room, or from across your own living room.
- A blank slide when nothing is needed. Hamilton recommends a black or blank slide when a visual is not in use, so the group looks at you for the close and the questions.
- Little movement. The textbook allows at most one kind of movement per slide. A slide that animates every line trains the audience to wait for the next line.
Whether to use bullets, and whether a slide's headline should be a phrase or a full sentence, is a question on which the sources differ. The default above, few words and no script, holds either way, and the disagreement is under Go deeper.
When the projector fails
The textbook's advice on aids is to have a backup plan, and its advice on the unexpected is to be ready to describe a chart briefly in words if it will not display (Stand Up, Speak Out on coping with the unexpected). So the talk does not depend on the slides. Each slide's notes carry what the slide shows, in a sentence, which is the same sentence you will say aloud for accessibility (next section). With that sentence written, a dead projector costs you the picture and nothing else. Put the file on a second device or a drive, send it ahead, and bring an adapter; the day-of checklist has a line for each.
A talk with no slides is a fair choice, and often the better one for a small room or a short ask. It removes the equipment from the plan. If the group needs one number or one picture, a single handout (see the next section) can carry it.
Presenting so everyone can follow Understand
Some people in the room cannot see the screen, cannot hear well, or read the slides with a screen reader later. Others are at the back, tired, new to the language or looking at their phones. The same practices help all of them. Accessible presenting means giving the content of the talk in more than one way, so that no one depends on a single sense. The World Wide Web Consortium's checklist for events is the clearest short guide we found (W3C's Making Events Accessible checklist). Convention
What to say aloud
- Describe everything on each slide that matters. W3C says to cover the text and the graphics in what you say, without reading every word. "This map shows the pocket park from above, with the two bench spots marked in red" is a description. Reading a caption is not.
- Describe what happens in the room. W3C's example is after a show of hands: say "about half raised a hand," so people who cannot see the room know.
- Speak clearly, not too fast, and in plain words. W3C says so for the sake of participants and interpreters who must keep up. Explain jargon and acronyms the first time.
- Pause between topics, and leave time after you ask for questions. The gap gives anyone following through an interpreter or captions time to catch up.
- Use the microphone. W3C says to speak into a good-quality microphone and to provide microphones for audience questions. Voice, microphone and the room explains why a loop or a hearing aid depends on it.
What to build into the slides
If you make slides in PowerPoint, Microsoft's accessibility page lists the steps its own checker looks for (Microsoft's guide to accessible PowerPoint presentations). They are product-specific, and other slide software has its own versions. Product-specific
| Practice | What it does | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| A unique title on every slide | People using a screen reader move through a deck by its slide titles | Microsoft |
| Alt text on pictures and charts | Alt text is a short written description attached to an image, read aloud by a screen reader | Microsoft |
| A set reading order | The screen reader reads items in the order you intend | Microsoft |
| 18-point or larger sans serif type | Reads from farther away | Microsoft; W3C notes fonts of even stroke thickness read better at a distance |
| Enough contrast, and not color alone | Text stands out from the background; meaning does not depend on telling red from green | Microsoft, W3C, Hamilton |
| The built-in Accessibility Checker | Flags missing alt text, titles and low contrast before you send the file | Microsoft |
The number for contrast comes from the web's accessibility standard. A contrast ratio compares the brightness of the text with the brightness of its background; a higher ratio means a bigger difference. The standard asks for at least 4.5 to 1 for ordinary text and at least 3 to 1 for large text, which it defines as 18 point or 14 point bold (W3C's Understanding Contrast (Minimum)). It was written for web pages. W3C's events checklist says to apply it to slides even though the medium differs, so we do. Convention Hamilton adds two color pairs to avoid because of color blindness: red with green, and blue with yellow.
Handouts and materials ahead
A slide deck is not a handout. The American Evaluation Association's guide says well-designed slides, with visuals and little text, make no sense without the presenter; a handout is a separate document with the key points, room for notes and your contact details (American Evaluation Association's Guidelines for Handouts). A handout is a page the audience keeps. Lumen's open textbook says to hand it out before the talk or after it, because during the talk it competes with you, and to say early that it exists so people listen instead of copying (Lumen's chapter on handouts).
W3C also asks presenters to send slides and handouts ahead of the event in an accessible format. For a club or a committee that usually means a message to the secretary or the organizer with a file, a few days before. A person who reads with software can then open the file before the meeting, at their own speed.
These are practices that make a talk easier to follow. They do not settle what a particular organization must provide. Whether a meeting has to offer sign language interpreters, captions or other aids under the Americans with Disabilities Act depends on who runs it and what kind of body it is, and we do not decide that. The ADA National Network's fact sheet on effective communication explains what the law covers and lists the aids it names (ADA National Network's Effective Communication fact sheet). If a listener needs an aid, ask the organizer early, because arranging an interpreter or captioner takes time; we found no source that gives a lead time, so we give none. This is not legal advice.
Numbers the audience can hold Understand
People who listen cannot reread a figure. The open textbook Stand Up, Speak Out notes that spoken language uses fewer precise numerical words than written language, because listeners must understand in the moment (Stand Up, Speak Out on oral and written language). Two sets of guidance on numbers in health materials give specific rules, and the talk can borrow them. Convention
| Rule | In a talk | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Few numbers, and familiar ones | Drop figures the group does not need. Use whole numbers. | CDC Index, item 15 |
| Say what a number means | Give "$1,800" and what it buys, not "$1,800" alone. | CDC Index, item 16 |
| Do not make the audience calculate | Do the subtraction or the division yourself and say the result. Keep the same denominator ("1 in 3" throughout). | CDC Index, item 17; FDA chapter 7 |
| Absolute change, not only relative | "Down from 6 percent to 3 percent" says more than "cut in half"; the FDA chapter says a relative figure makes an effect seem larger. | FDA chapter 7 |
| Keep the time frame the same | Compare a year with a year, not a year with a month. | FDA chapter 7 |
| Use a picture for a comparison | A bar graph compares well; the FDA chapter also names pictographs. | FDA chapter 7 |
The sources are the CDC's score sheet, already linked, and a chapter on quantitative information in the FDA's guide to communicating risks and benefits (FDA's Communicating Risks and Benefits, chapter 7, 2011). Both were written for health and medical information, and the second is a research synthesis of how people read risk. A request for $1,800 is not a health risk. The reading habits they describe may be general: the FDA chapter finds that relative figures make an effect seem larger and recommends constant denominators. Applying the rules to a budget request is our inference. Inference
The CDC's score sheet also says to explain a numeric probability in words or a visual (item 20). A talk to a parks committee rarely needs a probability. A talk to a school board about a rate of absence or a chance of rain on opening day does.
Questions from the room Understand
The questions after a talk are part of the talk, and the ones a speaker fears are usually predictable. Marietta College's handout on question and answer sessions gives a short method, and we follow it (Marietta College's Question and Answer Tips). Convention
- Predict the questions and rehearse the answers. Write the three to five you are most likely to get, from the cost to the objection of the person most likely to oppose you. Say each answer aloud during a run-through (Rehearsing out loud).
- Repeat or rephrase each question. It gives you a few seconds to think, confirms you heard it correctly, and lets the rest of the room hear it. In a large room, a question from the third row may reach no one else.
- Answer in about three sentences. Marietta says to keep answers short, unless the question is technical. The shape is: the answer, the one fact behind it, and what you will do next if anything.
- Answer to the whole room. Start by looking at the person who asked, then look around as you finish.
- Say "I don't know," and follow up. Marietta says to say so rather than guess, and to point to resources. "I don't know. I will find out and send the answer to the secretary by Friday" is a complete answer, provided you do it.
- Let the timekeeper end it. The chair or the timekeeper closes the questions on time. If you are speaking at a meeting you do not chair, agree beforehand who will do it (Running a meeting).
Two accessibility points go with this. A microphone for audience questions lets everyone hear them (W3C asks presenters to provide one), and a long pause after "Any questions?" gives a person who is processing a second language or reading captions time to form one. If the room has no question microphone, repeating each question aloud does the same job.
Bullets, sentence headlines and presenting as a group Go deeper
Where the sources differ on bullets
The chapter's default is few words and no script on the slide. Within that default, three sources part ways on how the words should be laid out. They write for different audiences, and none of them tests its advice on a ten-minute talk to a neighborhood group.
| Source | What it says | What it applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Hamilton College's speaking center | Use bullet points only, with no full sentences on slides | Student presentations in college courses |
| Penn State's Assertion-Evidence approach (Michael Alley) | Replace a phrase headline over a bulleted list with a full-sentence headline stating the point, supported by a picture, graph or diagram. It calls the phrase-and-bullets default perhaps the biggest single problem with slides. | Technical presentations; the author describes the approach as research-backed, and we did not read the studies (Assertion-Evidence home page) |
| American Evaluation Association | Slides with visuals and little text; slides are not handouts | Evaluators presenting findings |
The disagreement is about what to put in the space once the script is gone. A sentence headline over a picture does the work of a bullet list and tells the audience the point of the picture, which also helps the person who hears your description and cannot see the screen. A short bullet list is fine when the group needs to see three items together, such as three dates. Either one passes Mayer's redundancy principle as long as the slide says something different from what you are saying word for word. The default stays: no script on the slide.
The FDA chapter's finding on frequencies and percentages
The FDA chapter reports that a frequency format such as "10 out of 100" can feel riskier to people than the same chance given as "10 percent," because the frequency calls up images of the people affected. If your talk is about a hazard, such as a crossing or a chemical, choose the format on purpose and use it consistently. The chapter's evidence concerns health decisions, so the application to other topics is again an inference.
The CDC Index as a check on a handout
The Index's score sheet is a list of yes-or-no items for a document: is there one main message, does it come first, are the numbers few and explained. You can run your one-page handout through it as a checklist before you send it. It scores written materials, not talks, and a passing score does not prove the handout works for your audience.
Presenting in a group, or to a hybrid meeting
A hybrid meeting has some people in the room and some joining online. The University of Colorado's tips for hybrid meetings say to test audio and video for both groups beforehand, to share documents ahead, to have one person share the screen, and to assign someone to watch the online chat and raised hands (University of Colorado's hybrid meeting best practices). When two people present, agree who shares the screen and who speaks to which slide, and practice the handoff aloud once, so the pause between speakers is short.
See it: Sam's proposal to the neighborhood association See it
Sam Reyes, who uses they/them, is fictional, and every fact about Sam here is invented for this manual. Sam, 41, chairs the Oak Hollow Neighborhood Association's parks committee and is presenting a proposal to the association's monthly meeting. The slot is ten minutes plus five for questions, in a library community room, to about 35 members. The room has a projector and a handheld microphone. The proposal asks the association to spend $1,800 on two benches and a shade sail for the pocket park, with a vote at the following meeting. Two members use hearing aids, and the room has a hearing loop.
Known: the slot, the room, the number of members, the equipment, the request, the amount, the loop, and that the vote is at the next meeting.
The main message, first. Sam writes: "The parks committee asks the association to spend $1,800 on two benches and a shade sail for the pocket park, and to vote on it next month." Sam opens with that sentence, spoken in the first thirty seconds, and closes by saying it again.
Assumed: Sam's committee has a quote for each of the three items, and the figures add up to $1,800. Sam will say $1,800 once, say what each part costs from those quotes, and leave the arithmetic done. The committee has pictures of the pocket park as it is. At a planning rate of 130 words a minute, ten minutes holds about 1,300 words; Sam plans fewer, to leave room for describing slides and for pauses, and Sam's rehearsal times will decide.
The slides, each with its description. Sam keeps four and plans to describe each aloud.
| Slide | What it shows | What Sam says aloud, and the note under it |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The park today | One photo of the pocket park, no text | "This is the pocket park from the street. There is no shade and nowhere to sit." Alt text: a photo of the pocket park, an open lawn with no seating. |
| 2. What we propose | One picture of where the two benches and the shade sail would go | "The two benches go along the east edge, and the sail goes over the one corner that gets afternoon sun." Alt text: a site sketch with three marked places. |
| 3. The cost | One line: "$1,800 total," with the three items beside it | "The total is $1,800. It buys two benches and one shade sail, and here is what each costs." The note carries the three figures from the quotes. |
| 4. The request | One sentence headline: "Vote next month on $1,800 for benches and shade" | Sam repeats the main message. Then a blank slide for the questions. |
Each slide has a unique title and alt text, the type is 18 point or larger, and nothing on a slide is a sentence Sam will read. The one-page handout carries the three costs and the committee's contact details, and Sam says early in the talk that the handout exists.
The three likely questions. Sam expects maintenance, the shade sail in wind, and who installs. For each, Sam writes three sentences: the answer if Sam has one, the fact it stands on, and the next step. Sam has no figure for maintenance, so that answer is: "The park department would not take on the benches. We would ask the association to add them to the spring cleanup list. I will bring a draft of that to the vote." This is Sam's proposal, invented for the example; a real committee's answer would come from its own facts.
Open facts, and who settles each.
- Whether the slides go out ahead. The association's secretary settles it. Under this example, the secretary says to send them five days ahead as a PDF with alt text, so Sam does.
- How to say the cost. Sam settles it: one number, $1,800, and then what each part costs.
- Whether the vote can happen at the same meeting. The association's bylaws settle it. In this example they do not allow it until the next meeting, so Sam asks for a vote next month. See Decisions and minutes.
- Whether a member needs an aid that the room does not provide. The member and the association's officers settle it, and Sam asks the secretary ahead of time.
Under these assumptions the plan fits the slot. It does not predict how the vote will go, and it does not say that the association must provide any aid.
Free pages that show the method: W3C's accessible events checklist (what to say aloud, and what to send ahead), Marietta College's question and answer tips (one page, six habits), and the American Evaluation Association's handout guidelines (why slides are not handouts).
Practice: build one presentation on paper Practice
Minimum: a main message that opens the talk, a request in three facts if you have one, each slide described, and three questions answered. Time: about 45 minutes. Materials: the plan sheet, your slides or the list of what they would show, and a friend or a recording app for the answers.
- Write the main message. One sentence, in the plan sheet's main point line. Move it to the front of the talk. If you are asking for something, write the three facts under it: what, what it costs, by when.
- List your slides. For each, write what it shows and why the audience needs to see it. Strike the ones that only repeat you. Keep a blank slide for the questions.
- Write each slide's description. One sentence you will say aloud, and the alt text for the file you will send. Check the type size and the contrast.
- Write the numbers. List every figure in the talk. Cut those the audience does not need, round those that stay, and write the sentence that says what each means.
- Write three questions and three-sentence answers. Use the likeliest question, the hardest one and the one a friendly member would ask. Say each answer aloud.
- Set the budget. Paste your draft into the timing tool to count the words against your slot and your own rate.
Run the deck through the checker. If you use PowerPoint, open its Accessibility Checker and fix every flag it raises. Then turn the screen off and read your description notes to someone: can they follow the talk from your words alone? A slide that fails that test is carrying meaning only a picture can carry, and your description needs more.
Your talk Your talk
Check your work Check your work
Criteria
- Is the main message one sentence, and is it the first thing the audience hears?
- If you are asking for something, are the request, the cost and the date each said in a sentence before the reasons?
- Does every slide show something you cannot say as well, and does none carry your script?
- Is each slide described aloud in your notes, with alt text and a title in the file?
- Is each number rounded, explained in words and free of arithmetic for the audience?
- Are slides and the handout sent ahead, or is there a date by which they will be?
- Are three likely questions written with a three-sentence answer each?
Worked example
Sam's plan sheet opens with the main message, and the three facts of the request sit under it. The deck has four slides and a blank, each with a title, a description and alt text. The cost slide shows $1,800 and the three items, and Sam's notes give the three figures from the quotes. Three questions have answers of three sentences, and the maintenance answer says plainly what Sam does not know. It passes. What it does not settle is whether either member with hearing aids will find the room's loop on, which depends on the room's staff and on Sam using the microphone (Voice, microphone and the room).
Common mistakes
- Building toward the point. Open with the message and the request, and give the reasons after.
- Reading the slide. If the words are on the screen, the audience reads faster than you speak and stops listening.
- Describing nothing. A chart no one describes is missing for the people who cannot see it.
- Stacking numbers. Three figures with three denominators send the audience to a calculator that is not there.
- Treating slides as the handout. The deck makes little sense without you. Make a one-page handout.
- Guessing at an answer. Say you do not know, and say when you will.
What is still unresolved
Whether the group can decide on the day, and by what method, is for its bylaws and its chair (Decisions and minutes). Whether the organization must supply interpreters, captions or other aids is for its officers and, if needed, its attorney; the ADA National Network fact sheet is the place to start. How long the talk will really run is for your rehearsal times (Rehearsing out loud). Nerves, a blank mind and a screen that fails are in Nerves and the unexpected.