How to write content for a PPT?

PPTs have been found as a suitable and valuable interlinking bridge between different levels of work and people. Education, entertainment, administration or business, PPTs are conveying precise information between varied corridors and creating opportunities quicker and quicker every day. And so, the crafting of the textual content is becoming more and more significant. A flowing conveyance of information and facts totally depends on the appropriateness of the textual content in a PPT. Especially, the business-world has started to take care of the written stuff and utilize this form of presentation intensely to stay competitive and promote their offerings and presence around the globe. Well-written PPTs have become an integral facet of their business-strategies, for sure.

Here in this blog, you would be given deep insights to carve the textual content for a PPT so that your presentation structured with a suitable compilation of words would fetch you the desired result and satisfaction.

Must Have Skills Required in Presentation Writing

High quality content creation starts with your writing skills the way you wish. To produce content for presentation that creates an attention- needs right research before to make a brand. If you lose interest, it is totally waste of time, energy, and resources. No matter what type of content we are producing, it may be blog content, ppt content, website ad copy content or whatever- always keep only one thing in mind is high quality. In here, we outline few ideas which can be utilized by a content writer while presentation writing.

Always try to create strong headlines in content for ppt.
Eliminate grammatical errors in presentation content writing
Use spark some ideas in content writing to make it actionable
Try to cover every possible answer with visuals like pictures, videos, animations etc.
Write short and interesting in presentation writing
Write short and pointed content in presentation writing
Be 100% accurate in source of information while presentation writing

10 Key-points for writing effective content for PPT

If you don't have a good stretch of time to read them all, you can directly go to a specific point below in the list and click it to read it comprehensively:

Writing the textual content for a PPT becomes easy with the answers to these 6 easy questions
Address your target-audience in a PPT in second-person
Brevity in a PPT is the most effective mantra
The textual content in a PPT must have the base of language-regulations
6 Quick points to choose font-type & font-effects for a PPT
3 Quick points to select types of Bullet Points in a PPT
The textual content in a PPT must have an order
4 Important reasons to use Graphs, Charts & Numbers in a PPT
Synchronization between the textual content and images
4 Amazing benefits to have a storyline in a PPT

1. Writing the content for a PPT becomes easy with the answers to these 6 easy questions

An excellent and effective PPT contains different well-placed elements with a well-crafted textual content. Before writing the textual content on each slide, you must have answers of some meaningful questions. Like:

What kind of PPT presentation do you want to prepare?
What is the basic purpose ? To inform, instruct, entertain, to motivate or to sell through PPT?
What is the collective profile of your target-audience for this PPT?
What is the main message or idea of the presentation on the whole?
How many slides roughly you want to keep in the powerpoint?
How many words approximately you want to write on each slide?

When you are clear with the answers of these questions, often you would be crafting an appropriate textual content for your PPT, which arguably is the most used presentation-format across the world.

5 Staggering numbers about PPTs

By estimates, more than 500 million people use PowerPoint.
The world witnesses nearly 35 million PowerPoint Presentations every day in different sectors of working.
Across the world, more than 20,000 PPTs go into making every minute.
People across the world collectively spend roughly 15 million person-hours per day viewing presentations.
Across the world, more than $250 million gets spent uselessly every day due to inept and ineffectual PowerPoint Presentations.

2. Address your target-audience in a PPT in second-person

A PPT has various features and aspects. Text is a critical part apart from visuals, images, animation etc. And fitting the texts into a suitable combination which maximizes their effect and emphasis in conveying the core message is another craft altogether. And while doing so, You must address your target-audience in second person and use the pronouns You, Your and Yours repeatedly in the content, depending on the formation of the sentences. A combination of conversational pronouns like You and We makes a deeper impact on the audience.

3. Brevity in a PPT is the most effective mantra

Overloading the slides with too many words can confuse the audience

Brevity is the soul of a PPT. An effective PPT must not contain more than 15-20 slides. And secondly, overloading the slides with too many words or too much data can confuse the audience. Keeping in line with the conciseness, each slide of the PPT must carry the quantity of words which is enough to highlight the overall meaning of the slide.
Research-based facts, supporting limited number of words on a slide
1. As per a SlideRocket Survey, the most prevalent reason for a PPT to turn into an ineffective presentation is too many words on its slides.
2. According to the Survey, the main problem that people have with a PPT is too much texts.
3. PPT have normally 40 words on a slide.
4. But the most striking PPTs carry fewer than 40 words on each slide.
5. More than 90% of the people going through a PPT can't sit through its entire length, if it is word-loaded.
Entire meaning of a slide must be summarized in its title

The textual title on each slide of your PPT encapsulates the crux of the message on the slide. There is a big chance that your target-audiences would read the titles only on each of the slides and try to gulp the essence of your presentation. These textual titles shape up the individuality of your PPT.
The 1-6-6 Rule works great

One message per slide must be the mantra. The title of a slide must encapsulate the core of the message on the slide. You must adhere to the 1-6-6 Rule that simply says each slide of a PPT should have one main idea, a maximum of 6-8 Bullet Points and a maximum of 6-7 words per Bullet Point.
Ambiguous slangs or wordy text-blocks may ruin your purpose

While you must refrain from using heavy and difficult words, your textual content also must be generally free from ambiguous slangs. You must not cloud and complicate important information in wordy text-blocks which would often be missed by the audience. In fact, you must pack your big and complex ideas into short and clear sentences.

4. The textual content in a PPT must have the base of language-regulations

Grammatical or spelling errors leave a bad impression

Grammatical errors or inadvertent spelling errors are the most glaring wrongdoing in a presentation. A PPT's textual content must not carry any grammatical or spelling error whatsoever. Try using simple word spell check feature or go for advance content check at site like https://app.grammarly.com/
Smart and apt use of Block & Small Letters or appropriate use of formatting
With the small letters constituting the bulk of the textual content, block letters must also be used as and when required, in line with the language-regulations.

5. How to choose right font-type for PPT & deal with font-effects

Generally, fonts can be segregated into 3 fundamental types, namely Serif, Sans-Serif and Script. Serif fonts like Times Roman, Bookman, Century etc., which possess some sorts of styles on the end of each letter, have a low legibility-quotient when the presentation is on a projector. They can be used for title-texts where you can opt for larger text-size. They certainly elevate the style-quotient of your overall textual presentation.
But undoubtedly, Sans-Serif font, which does not have anything at the end of the letters, is the most compatible font for a presentation. Sans-Serif fonts like Arial, Calibri, Century Gothic, Helvetica etc. are most legible for PPT and audiences don't have to read the texts and understand them in steps. They can comprehend your presentation in one go in Sans-Serif fonts. They can be equally used for both, title-texts and body-texts.
The structure and style of Script fonts has been created on handwriting. These fonts copy handwriting in principle. So, they are not easily legible on presentation-slides and the whole attention of your audiences will be spent on reading the texts in these fonts rather than comprehending the message.
The size of fonts can be kept between 32-40 for title-texts and 24-32 for body-texts, depending on your respective needs and choices. Since an apt font-selection for the textual content in a PPT increases the impact of the content for the audience, a font to wrap the content must be well-thought, easy-to-read and steady throughout the PPT. The only criterion here should be the legibility of the texts and overall impact of the presentation which is why the size of the font also depends on the content's legibility.
In a quintessential corporate ambience, where a presenter carries through the presentation, you can opt for a stylish but less emphatic font, whereas in a conference, where the presentation itself is the sole communicator, you can opt for an emphatic font. In a one-on-one presentation, legibility becomes the only criterion.
Mostly you must use Font-effects of 3 types to highlight the texts in your PPT:
- Bold Texts: You can make your font deep by simply making the texts bold. With a cautious approach, you can attract the audience with the boldness of the font.
- Underlined Texts: Putting a line under words is also a good method to put emphasis on them for their meaning.
- Italicization: Italicized words denote emphasis, but in a PPT presentation, they may not be excellently legible. Therefore, an italic style in your font must be carefully used. All of these highlighting-techniques or styles in Word Art must be applied to accentuate the words in your presentation, in order to simplify the core message for the audiences.

6. 3 Quick points to select types of Bullet Points in a PPT

Bullet Points, for the text on a slide in a PPT, are a traditional and effective method to put forward the important details and facts of your business. In fact, commonly Bullet Points in a presentation carry the very essence of your business or initiative. These points draw the attention of the audiences in a jiffy and they get an understanding of the matter by only reading them. Keep these 3 basic points in mind to pick the specific Bullet for a specific use in your PPT:

Shape of Bullet: Bullets with the shape of filled circle, filled square, open circle, hyphen and arrow are the most prominent bullet-types. The basic purpose is the ease for the audiences in reading the important words of the presentation. You can opt for a specific bullet-type as per your liking and need, keeping in line with the font you have selected for the texts. Even graphics can be bulleted, but this exercise must be done sparingly, and you must bear in mind that these bulleted graphs or graphics should not take away the concentration of the audiences from the textual matter.
Dimension of Bullet: The convention has always been to opt for a bullet which bears the size somewhat smaller than the font of the texts so that these Bullet Points do not divert the attention and the interest of the audiences from the texts.
Bullet-placing: Going for Bullet Points and accordingly choosing their specific type is only done for highlighting the textual material, or sometimes graphics, to make the entire presentation for the audiences increasingly simpler and easier to understand. So, making everything cramped and congested hardly solves the purpose. A perfect placing of bullet having enough space between the bullet and the first letter of the text nearby is crucial. Words after bullets must be easily noticeable. So, while Bullet Points are oft-repeated font-effects, they need to be selected deftly and keeping the entire presentation in mind.

7. The textual content in a PPT must have an order

Different aspects of a content, i.e. introduction, vision, mission, main message, products, services, future projections, statistical numbers, graphs & charts, conclusion, Call of Action etc., must follow a sequence and this sequencing entirely depends on the vision of the writer. When you know the aim of the PPT, the main message and the profile of your target-audience, you can decide on the order of the mention of different aspects of the content easily.

8. 4 Important reasons to use Graphs, Charts & Numbers in a PPT

A great way to get you audiences' attention is to hit them with a surprising number.
A textual content interspersed with graphs and charts conveys a better understanding of the broad meaning to audiences. Business-world often uses graphs, charts and various specific numbers to make their sales-pitch more emphatic and precise.
A visually illustration of various data and numbers is the easiest way to present even heavily numerical and complicated data in a very comprehending manner. These intricate numbers may take bigger space on a slide if they are written in texts and, they can't be described adequately in a textual presentation.
Relevant numbers and statistics give a base of conviction to your ideas in a PPT.

9. Synchronization between the textual content and images

An effective PPT always has this amazing synchronization between the textual content and images or videos, if so any. They support each other to magnify the meaning.

10. 4 Amazing benefits to have a storyline in a PPT

A rhythm of a story in the textual content does magic for a PPT.

According to a report in the New York Times, when we're told stories, our brains often don't differentiate fact from fiction; instead, we tend to immerse ourselves in the stories as though we're part of them. This, in turn, makes it easier for us to connect to any given idea and empathize with both the message and the person telling the story.

A story-linking rhythm in the textual content of a PPT touches the core of the emotions of your audience and makes them relate and understand the crux of the presentation in a much easier way than with all those dry facts and figures together.

So, make sure that you assimilate all your facts, numbers and images as a relatable narrative which carries a deep recall-value for your audience.

Research one after another has proved that nothing engages audiences and drives them to Call of Action more than a convincing tale of facts and figures.