Technical writing

Technical writing November 30th, 2012

Today • Gestures. • Making effective PowerPoints.

Presentation Skills: Gestures A gesture = “a hand movement that is just as much a part of language as speech.” It you give your presentation like this: The audience is less likely to appreciate your ideas.

Presentation Skills: Gestures How do you gesture then? - Gestures must look natural and must fit the circumstance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKuopm1FnkM

Presentation Skills: Gestures How do you gesture then? - Gestures must look natural and must fit the circumstance. - Try to observe how you gesture naturally (record or practice in a mirror).

Gestures: General guidelines 1. One on one conversational gestures tend to be small and come from the wrist. - This won’t work well for a presentation. - Gestures need to be “enlarged”. “Talking with your hands”.

Gestures: General guidelines 2. Start gestures from the shoulder. - Makes the gestures “bigger” and more expressive.

Gestures: General guidelines 3. Make sure your gestures are high enough. • Low gestures draw the eyes of the audience down and away from your face. • This can be distracting.

Gestures: General guidelines 4. Expand on your natural body language style. - Trying to force gestures or plan them can make you look unnatural. - Trying to include words and phrases in your speech that have obvious gestures associated with them can be helpful(i.e., tall, small, on one hand, etc.).

Effective PowerPoints

This: • Do not attempt to put all the text, code, or explanation of what you are talking about directly onto the slide, especially if it consists of full, long sentences. Or paragraphs. There’s no place for paragraphs on slides. If you have complete sentences, you can probably take something out. • If you do that, you will have too much stuff to read on the slide, which isn’t always a good thing. • Like the previous slide, people do not really read all the stuff on the slides. • That’s why it’s called a “presentation” and not “a reading” of your work • Practice makes perfect, which is what gets you away from having to have all of you “notes” in textual form on the screen in front of you. • Utilize the Notes function of PowerPoint, have them printed out for your reference. • The audience doesn’t need to hear the exact same thing that you are reading to them. • The bullet points are simply talking points and should attempt to summarize the big ideas that you are trying to convey • If you’ve reached anything less than 18 point font, for God’s sake, please: • Remove some of the text • Split up the text and put it on separate slides • Perhaps you are trying to do much in this one slide? • Reading a slide is annoying. • You should not simply be a text-to-speech converter.

vs. This: PowerPoint slides should be: - Simple and clean. - Easy-to-read - Facilite to the presentation.

Presentation Media (i.e., ppt.) These are integral to presentations: - Supplements verbal information. - Helps the audience follow the presentation. - Clarifies information (i.e., figures, visuals).

But… It is important to remember: - The screen is not a script. Don’t overload on text. - ppt. format is different than written documents. Short, simple text and visuals are used. - Clarity is essential. Proper format, font, and layout.

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Contrast

The reason why this issue of movie violence is an important issue to me • I think violence in all forms in wrong. • Showing children examples of violence can only have negative consequences. • Parents need to control their children’s viewing.

Contrast • Violence continued to get more extreme over time. • What used to be shocking is now funny to some.

Contrast • You need to be careful with contrast. • Bad color choices affect visibility.

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Contrast - Generally, dark text on light background. - Light text on dark background: - acceptable, but potentially difficult to see. - Be careful if doing this. i.e., black background and white text =

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Background - Use a single background. - Background is your stage. - Don’t change the stage!

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Animation - Keep it basic. - The medium is not the message, the information is. - Your audience is not a group of children. Unnecessary!

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Balance - Do not center bullet points. - Make them line up. - Or it will be confusing.

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Balance - Left-aligned. - Lined-up. - Easy to follow.

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Balance - Or slightly indented. - Still lined-up. - Still easy to follow.

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Balance (visuals) Centered graphics leave little room for text.

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Balance - Place graphics off-center. - More room for text. - Better balance. - More pleasing to the eye. - Left placement leads the eye to the text.

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Font and color - Same rules as documents. - Talked about this a few weeks ago. - Use at least 18-point font - 24-point – 36-point - Standard font type.-Times New Roman. - Arial

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Avoid text overload Having too much text on the screen can defeat the purpose of using PowerPoint. The slides begin to look like a jumble of text, making slides difficult to read and unrecognizable from each other. People will either try to read everything or copy everything down or they will lose interest. List only the key points. If you have more info to include use more slides or create handouts.

Basic Rules That You Must Have to Have a Good PowerPoint Presentation That Everyone Can Understand One of the most common mistakes in creating a presentation is to place too much information on the screen. This can cause the reader to become distracted from the speaker…just like you are now. Audiences are much more receptive to the spoken word.

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Bullet Points • How many • Levels of • Hierarchy do • You think • You need * To express - Your point?

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Speelchick • How samrt will poeple thikn yuo are? • Watch for: • there/their/they’re • too/to/two • its/it’s CHECK YOUR SPELLING

Basic Rules: PowerPoint Figures - Follow the guidelines in the U.N. reading. - Generally, 1 figure per slide. - Text is not necessary. - Except titles.

Figures - Good

Figures - Bad

Figures - Terrible

PowerPoint Text - You want to keep the text simple. - You should start bullet points with verbs if verbs are involved. - The active voice is the voice that should be used. - If you have key nouns, just use the key noun (it doesn’t need a sentence). - It is a good idea to keep your sentences short, 5 – 7 words maximum when possible. - Keep the number of bullet points to 5 maximum.

PowerPoint Text - Keep the text simple. - Start bullet points with verbs. - Use active voice. - Key nouns - Sentences: 5 to 7 words. - 5 bullet points max.

Concluding your Proposal Transition into the conclusion: “So, to sum up…” “To conclude…” “I would like to wrap up by saying…”

Concluding your Proposal Give a brief summary of the problem and solution: - This summary should re-emphasize the importance/strengths of your solution. “To sum up: our assistant is overworked, which is causing a decrease in efficiency and job satisfaction. By hiring an additional assistant, we will increase efficiency and increase job satisfaction which will help us retain faculty members, thus cutting down on hiring costs in the long run.”

Concluding your Proposal Thank the audience: “I would like to thank you all for your attention this afternoon.” “We appreciate your attention today. Thank you.” “Thank you for considering this proposal.” “Thanks for listening” = F

Concluding your Proposal Open the floor for questions: “At this time, we will take any questions you may have.” “If there are any questions, we will be happy to answer them now.” “We will now open the floor for questions.”

Concluding your Proposal Each group will answer one question. - The question will come from another team.

Concluding your Proposal After answering the question: - State that, if there are any further questions, you will be happy to discuss them later. Thank the audience once more.

The Best Thing to Do… The 3 P’s: P P P repare repare repare

Technical writing