Some technical "PowerPoint" tips

While lack of PowerPoint skills is hardly the major problem, here's a few rules to go by:

• Don't compare objects with red and green. Lots of people have red-green color blindness.

• Use sharp contrasts. Colors on the projection screen may look quite different than on your computer monitor.

• Use a simple font that's easy to read, Arial bold is a good example. No fancy script type fonts

• No logos or templates. A blank white sheet with black font is normally perfect. In a very large auditorium it can help to reverse things and have a very light font against a dark slide.

• Write big. 24 Arial bold for text, 36 Arial bold for titles. 18 and 32 is passable. If for some reason (???) you need to put something up with a smaller font, point to that part of the slide and tell the audience they don't need to read it.

• Try not to go to the edge of the slide, you never know if the projection will show the complete slide.