Who wrote the law that mandates PowerPoint?

Steve Simon

2007-12-28

A recent filler item in BMJ, The PowerPoint presentation, written by David Isaacs, Stephen Isaacs, and Dominic Fitzgerald, provided a light hearted view of the bad habits that PowerPoint induces in presenters. I added a comment in the Rapid Responses section of the website titled “Who wrote the law that mandates PowerPoint?

I mention how I use a handout rather than PowerPoint for my talks. I don’t have to worry about transferrring my file to a strange computer or how it will look at a different screen resolution. I also dispute the myth that it is bad for people to read your handout while you are talking. If you don’t want to totally abandon PowerPoint, I suggest that you use a minimal number of slides, use black text on a white background, and use full sentences rather than a bulleted list.

You can find an earlier version of this page on my old website.