How to Avoid Using Bullet Points


If you want to be greeted with groans and moans and sighs and rolled eyes at the beginning of your presentation, fill your first slide with bullet points. It’s a surefire way to lose your audience, and an easy way to be forgotten before you even begin. Because we know that’s precisely what you don’t want to do, here’s a few tips on how to avoid the all-too-common fate of using too many bullet points.

First, take a look at your content. Are you working with dense, recondite material, or is it easy to swallow and comprehend? Either way, the amount of bullet points should, in an ideal world, equal to zero when you’re finished parsing out your essential information.

It’s important to remember that the words on a slide should be the simplest, briefest way to introduce (and remind yourself) what you, as the presenter, are explaining to the audience. In his bestselling book, Presenting to Win, Jerry Weissman says, “As the presenter, it’s your job to put flesh on the bones of the headline bullets. The presenter provides the body text. The presenter is the focus of the presentation.”

Think of your presentation deck as an outline, a series of guidelines to remind you of the points you want to cover throughout. If you include too much information on the slide accompanying you, the audience will read the slide instead of listening to you. As the presenter, you are the most important element of the presentation. Your slides are just an aesthetically pleasing outline for you and the audience.

Weissman is a little more forgiving about the use of bullet points than we are here at Ethos3. We’d like to see a deck with no bullet points whatsoever, but if that doesn’t seem realistic for your presentation (or if you’re feeling stuck in your old ways) Weissman offers some guidelines. “To make your bullet slide clean and crisp, try to follow the 4 x 4 formula: four lines down, four words across,” he writes. “Or, if the subject warrants, you can go up 6 x 4: six lines down, but still only four words across.”

If you’ve just got to have those bullets, follow Weissman’s advice. Keep them short and concise, and avoid wordwrap, which is when a bullet point is too long to fit on one line and continues to a second line. Weissman says this requires an extra eye sweep from the audience, which is just more work for them. Keep it short. Keep it succinct. Keep it simple.

So please, don’t fall into the trap of thinking you must fit all of your content in the presentation deck. To the contrary, in fact, as you should be the one explaining and nuancing your content enthusiastically. Remember: big graphics, big text, few words. Imagine how much more exciting your presentation will be for the audience when you present in such a way. You retain a little mystery, a little excitement, a little intrigue. Instead of giving away your hand up front, you’re holding your cards close to your chest, waiting until just the right time to present your information.

If the audience just wanted to read a presentation, they would have you send over your detailed deck beforehand and your presence wouldn’t be necessary. Maybe with your pre-presentation jitters that sounds like a great option, but embrace the opportunity to have the sole attention of a group of people. You’re the one who matters, who people are excited to hear speak. Feel good about that, and make the most out of the opportunity.





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