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Moving beyond bullets
PowerPoint was originally created as an outline formation tool to aid visual support. Bullets structured in outline form made complete sense. Today PowerPoint has morphed into a new world. Bullets still sometimes apply. Here's how and when to use them, but most of all we want you to move beyond bullets and avoid using them.
First, use bullets, if at all possible, only when you have an ordinal listing of information. To avoid using bullets, which usually bore the audience, try replacing the bullets with images or graphics and short trigger statements similar to what you would find in an advertisement. If this implies creating more slides, that is o.k. because your time spent on each slide will be less and will force the audience to stay focused as they realize the presentation will be moving faster.
If you find it unavoidable that bullets must be used, then you should apply the rule of five to bullets. The rule of five is never to use more than five bullets on one slide (we recommend less) and each bullet is no more than five words. In other words, the bullets are merely triggers for the presenter to speak their knowledge. When the bullet fragments are only five words, the presenter must speak as opposed to reading, but, better yet, the audience who reads faster than we can speak is no longer reading lengthy bullets and therefore, listening to you the presenter.
