The default bulleted lists for both PowerPoint and Keynote are incorrect. It doesn’t take much work to correct them.
Default, ugly bullets
Better bullets, with a little help.
Here is what I did:
- I used my professional font, in this case, Helvetica Neue, Condensed Bold. See point #4 on sucking less.
- I reduced the font size from 42pt to 24pt. Leave some white space on the page. It makes the text easier to digest/consume.
- I reduced the default setting for the bullet size (relative) from 125% to 95%. Big giant black dots are distracting from the points themselves.
- I made the bullet text wrap correctly. In the default, the text falls under the number. Even bulleted lists in HTML don’t do that.
- I corrected the line spacing. This is a three step process. First I changed the line space from 1.0 (single) to 0.75. Depending on the font and its size, I sometimes go to as tight as 0.7. Next I changed the “After Paragraph” spacing to 16pt. Before paragraph spacing is set to 0. Lastly, I changed the text indent to 18px (pixels and points almost the same thing). Both PowerPoint and Keynote will sometimes have bullets indented, which is usually a problem, so I generally set this to 0.
- If this were a real presentation, I would have reduced the text when possible. Full sentences are not needed…but single line words that don’t say anything are also pretty annoying.
Most PPT slides are simply a title and bullets. I think fewer than 2% of my slides are like this. So bulleted lists should be part of a slide that has something other than just a title and bulleted lists. Unfortunately, this WordPress template does a very crappy job with numbered lists…so you will have to live with my hypocrisy in this case on the blog. I will need to clean up the CSS when I get a chance. Thankfully the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, read my post and personally updated the CSS for me so that my numbered lists and bulleted lists now adhere to my own advice in this post! WordPress FTW!
What else could I have done to make the bulleted list better? What other mistakes do you see?
[...] how to do bulleted lists correctly (note: the default formatting for bulleted text, even in Keynote, is completely [...]
Dude. You have a typo in the last bullet point – the = they (!)
Good catch, Graeme! I will have to fix the image later.
Hey Jeff,
What kinds of situations do bulleted lists convey information the best in your experience? I’m just curious because other presentation tips I’ve read suggest having less than 7 words on a slide and a list seems likely to have the potential to break that rule.
Justin
(a Twitter follower and friend of Matt B. at Xobni)
Hey Justin:
There is a full debate to be had about bullets. I generally agree that bullet points should be just that…abbreviated points and not full sentences (hence the lack of periods at the end of a bulleted item). Seven words seems like an reasonable recommendation for limit. I think as people master how and when to do bullets, they can break the rules as they see fit. The bigger point for me, is I do almost 0 bullet-list-only slides, compared to the rest of the world that seems to use bullet- list-only 80% of their preso. In these cases, they are letting the slide do the presenting for them, rather than the other way around. Bulleted lists are better off highlighting points in an image, chart or table. I will add some examples in future posts. You bring up some good points.
[...] how to do bulleted lists correctly (note: the default formatting for bulleted text, even in Keynote, is completely [...]
Your list styles should be less-sucky now. Great set of posts.
Dude! How sweet is that. Thanks so much Matt. The founder swept in and fixed my blog list style. Amazing!
[...] how to do bulleted lists correctly (note: the default formatting for bulleted text, even in Keynote, is completely [...]