I'm not a big fan of Powerpoint. Obviously it has its place, which is visual speaker aids for presentations, and perhaps highly visual topics (although it is a terrible drawing tool, IMO). But in corporate life, at least where I work, a "deck" has become a substitute for a written memo.
I think this is bad and wrong for multiple reasons. Nobody expects to read a Powerpoint, so text within a deck must, by convention, be much abbreviated. As a writing tool, Powerpoint is inferior and inconvenient. Of course, that also contributes to excess brevity and glossing over the details.
Why do people use Powerpoint this way, and what can be done about it? I believe one reason Powerpoint is attractive is that fixed pages, vs scrolling content, serve to anchor the reader. Given that even a deep, multi-page corporate memo is not going to be a novel, I think that is fine. But there is an easy solution: create page breaks. I think if Word did more to encourage a page-oriented writing style, including Powerpoint-style display only one page at a time, it would help.
Then again, there are other reasons that will be difficult to overcome. One is that many corporate authors probably view Powerpoint's brevity as a benefit. Either because they aren't good at real writing, or because they want to leverage its built-in potential for brevity to elide difficult or inconvenient details. Then of course there is sheer habit--if management expects analyses to be delivered via Powerpoint, it is hard to buck the trend. Especially if doing so subjects the recipient to the need for deep reading.
I take consolation in the fact that one of the very biggest, most successful and innovative organizations in the world bans it.
I think this is bad and wrong for multiple reasons. Nobody expects to read a Powerpoint, so text within a deck must, by convention, be much abbreviated. As a writing tool, Powerpoint is inferior and inconvenient. Of course, that also contributes to excess brevity and glossing over the details.
Why do people use Powerpoint this way, and what can be done about it? I believe one reason Powerpoint is attractive is that fixed pages, vs scrolling content, serve to anchor the reader. Given that even a deep, multi-page corporate memo is not going to be a novel, I think that is fine. But there is an easy solution: create page breaks. I think if Word did more to encourage a page-oriented writing style, including Powerpoint-style display only one page at a time, it would help.
Then again, there are other reasons that will be difficult to overcome. One is that many corporate authors probably view Powerpoint's brevity as a benefit. Either because they aren't good at real writing, or because they want to leverage its built-in potential for brevity to elide difficult or inconvenient details. Then of course there is sheer habit--if management expects analyses to be delivered via Powerpoint, it is hard to buck the trend. Especially if doing so subjects the recipient to the need for deep reading.
I take consolation in the fact that one of the very biggest, most successful and innovative organizations in the world bans it.
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