Chapter 2- Creating Slides and Handouts

by Diana Arcaute

The handout should enhance your presentation while giving your audience key information you covered. You want to make the handout quick and to the point. Avoid tons of pages and give your audience one sheet with access to the power-point online. It is best to organize your handout in a double column view so it is easy to follow along during the presentation. The handout should be a guide your audience uses during the presentation. The handout is a place where your audience can highlight useful information they want to review at a later point of time. The chapter made a very good point. Images and pictures allow us to make connections to our own lives. Your handouts should also include strong images from your presentation and an area with additional resources. The last presentation I attended was awful. The presenter had a PowerPoint with sixty slides filled with text the presenter was reading verbatim. The handout was just the PowerPoint all over again and it was way too small to read. I actually saw one lady using a hand lens to see it. All the handout did was confirm, that I was not going to enjoy the presentation. I was in for it. I sat there tortured for six hours. Luckily, I took my book as back-up. The more I read the more I realized how the presentation had gone against everything I read and have learned.