chris gave a speech to his colleagues

Is it Chris’ or Chris’s? (Correct Grammar + Examples)

What is the possession and pluralization of the proper noun “Chris?” Using the apostrophe in the English language typically provides pluralization to the word that it is modifying. Adding an apostrophe can suggest that there is possession. And many amounts of certain things. For example, “Sonia’s book is missing.” In this sentence , the possession of the book is to Sonia, the person. This is how an apostrophe can modify singular nouns . An apostrophe can also modify compound nouns and create joint or separate possession.

Learn which word form is correct in this short guide…

Why is there confusion between Chris’ and Chris’s?

When we pluralize and show possession, we typically an apostrophe + “s” to the word form we are modifying. In this situation, “Chris’s” and “Chris'” are technically both correct. Although where they get used and how they get used is where things become confusing.

For example, if we are showing possession, we would say, “We can go to Chris’ house.” This would be the possessive form of the word and name “Chris.” The confusion is that the word ends in an “s” already, making it complex to pluralize.

How to use the apostrophe correctly

The  possessive singular noun is made by adding an apostrophe and the letter “s” to the singular noun in question, regardless of whether the singular noun ends in an “s” letter.

When a  plural noun has an “s” at the end, the possessive form of the noun is created by simply adding an apostrophe. When the noun ends in any other letter, the possessive form is made by adding both an apostrophe and an “s.”

“Chris” definition

Let’s take a look at the definition of “Chris.”

Which is correct? Chris’ or Chris’s?

Here is a simple breakdown of which word form is correct. For examples of each word form in an English sentence, scroll down to the next section.

Key differences

In the above examples, we are trying to show possession when we are referring to a proper noun (a person). Both of the first forms are correct with the last form being incorrect.

“Chris’s” sentence examples

Below are sentence examples using the word form correctly:

• We went to Chris’s house the other day for a meal. It was great.
• I want to go to Chris’s basketball game today.

“Chris'” sentence examples

• We went to the basketball game and saw Chris’ family.
• I’d like to go to the show so we can visit with them for Chris’ birthday.

How to remember which word form to use

Remember that we only use an apostrophe + “s” when we are trying to show possession over another noun (in this case a proper noun). Both forms of the word are correct depending on which style guide we are referring to.

Here is a simple trick to remember apostrophe rules:

Use apostrophe + “s” with nouns that don’t end in “s”. When a singular noun has possession over another noun ( such as Sarah’s hat or mom’s cat), add an apostrophe + “s” to the end of the noun. The same rules apply for collective nouns and plural nouns that don’t end in the “s” letter.

Common questions

Questions and answers about the English language.

Is it Chris’s birthday or Chris’ birthday?

Both forms of this sentence are grammatically correct.

Is it Chris’s family or Chris’ family?

Inside this article

Fact checked: Content is rigorously reviewed by a team of qualified and experienced fact checkers. Fact checkers review articles for factual accuracy, relevance, and timeliness. Learn more.

About the author

Dalia Y.: Dalia is an English Major and linguistics expert with an additional degree in Psychology. Dalia has featured articles on Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, Grammarly, and many more. She covers English, ESL, and all things grammar on GrammarBrain.

Core lessons

• Abstract Noun
• Accusative Case
• Active Sentence
• Alliteration
• Adjective Clause
• Adjective Phrase
• Adverbial Clause
• Appositive Phrase
• Body Paragraph
• Compound Adjective
• Complex Sentence
• Compound Words
• Compound Predicate
• Common Noun
• Comparative Adjective
• Comparative and Superlative
• Compound Noun
• Compound Subject
• Compound Sentence
• Copular Verb
• Collective Noun
• Colloquialism
• Conciseness
• Conditional
• Concrete Noun
• Conjunction
• Conjugation
• Conditional Sentence
• Comma Splice
• Correlative Conjunction
• Coordinating Conjunction
• Coordinate Adjective
• Cumulative Adjective
• Dative Case
• Declarative Statement
• Direct Object Pronoun
• Direct Object
• Dangling Modifier
• Demonstrative Pronoun
• Demonstrative Adjective
• Direct Characterization
• Definite Article
• Doublespeak
• Equivocation Fallacy
• Future Perfect Progressive
• Future Simple
• Future Perfect Continuous
• Future Perfect
• First Conditional
• Gerund Phrase
• Genitive Case
• Helping Verb
• Irregular Adjective
• Irregular Verb
• Imperative Sentence
• Indefinite Article
• Intransitive Verb
• Introductory Phrase
• Indefinite Pronoun
• Indirect Characterization
• Interrogative Sentence
• Intensive Pronoun
• Inanimate Object
• Indefinite Tense
• Infinitive Phrase
• Interjection
• Intensifier
• Indicative Mood
• Juxtaposition
• Linking Verb
• Misplaced Modifier
• Nominative Case
• Noun Adjective
• Object Pronoun
• Object Complement
• Order of Adjectives
• Parallelism
• Prepositional Phrase
• Past Simple Tense
• Past Continuous Tense
• Past Perfect Tense
• Past Progressive Tense
• Present Simple Tense
• Present Perfect Tense
• Personal Pronoun
• Personification
• Persuasive Writing
• Parallel Structure
• Phrasal Verb
• Predicate Adjective
• Predicate Nominative
• Phonetic Language
• Plural Noun
• Punctuation
• Punctuation Marks
• Preposition
• Preposition of Place
• Parts of Speech
• Possessive Adjective
• Possessive Determiner
• Possessive Case
• Possessive Noun
• Proper Adjective
• Proper Noun
• Present Participle
• Quotation Marks
• Relative Pronoun
• Reflexive Pronoun
• Reciprocal Pronoun
• Subordinating Conjunction
• Simple Future Tense
• Stative Verb
• Subjunctive
• Subject Complement
• Subject of a Sentence
• Sentence Variety
• Second Conditional
• Superlative Adjective
• Slash Symbol
• Topic Sentence
• Types of Nouns
• Types of Sentences
• Uncountable Noun
• Vowels and Consonants

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11.4 Visual Aids

Learning objective.

• Demonstrate how to use visual aids effectively in your presentation.

Almost all presentations can be enhanced by the effective use of visual aids. These can include handouts, overhead transparencies, drawings on the whiteboard, PowerPoint slides, and many other types of props. Visual aids are an important nonverbal aspect of your speech that you can control. Once you have chosen a topic, you need to consider how you are going to show your audience what you are talking about.

Have you ever asked for driving directions and not understood someone’s response? Did the person say, “Turn right at Sam’s Grocery Store, the new one” or “I think you will turn at the second light, but it might be the third one”? Chances are that unless you know the town well or have a map handy, the visual cue of a grocery store or a traffic light might be insufficient to let you know where to turn. Your audience experiences the same frustration, or sense of accomplishment, when they get lost or find their way during your speech. Consider how you can express yourself visually, providing common references, illustrations, and images that lead the audience to understand your point or issue.

Visual aids accomplish several goals:

• Make your speech more interesting
• Enhance your credibility as a speaker
• Serve as guides to transitions, helping the audience stay on track
• Communicate complex or intriguing information in a short period of time
• Reinforce your verbal message
• Help the audience use and retain the information

Purpose, Emphasis, Support, and Clarity

When you look at your own presentation from an audience member’s perspective, you might consider how to distinguish the main points from the rest of the information. You might also consider the relationships being presented between ideas or concepts, or how other aspects of the presentation can complement the oral message.

Your audience naturally will want to know why you are presenting the visual aid. The purpose for each visual aid should be clear, and almost speak for itself. If you can’t quickly grasp the purpose of a visual aid in a speech, you have to honestly consider whether it should be used in the first place. Visual aids can significantly develop the message of a speech, but they must be used for a specific purpose the audience can easily recognize.

Perhaps you want to highlight a trend between two related issues, such as socioeconomic status and educational attainment. A line graph might show effectively how, as socioeconomic status rises, educational attainment also rises. This use of a visual aid can provide emphasis, effectively highlighting key words, ideas, or relationships for the audience.

Visual aids can also provide necessary support for your position. Audience members may question your assertion of the relationship between socioeconomic status and educational attainment. To support your argument, you might include on the slide, “According to the U.S. Department of Education Study no. 12345,” or even use an image of the Department of Education Web page projected on a large screen. You might consider showing similar studies in graphic form, illustrating similarities across a wide range of research.

Figure 11.4

Visual aids provide necessary support for your position, illustrate relationships, and demonstrate trends.

Austin Kleon – powerpoint as a comic – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Clarity is key in the use of visual aids. One way to improve clarity is to limit the number of words on a PowerPoint slide. No more than ten words per slide, with a font large enough to be read at the back of the room or auditorium, is a good rule of thumb. Key images that have a clear relationship to the verbal message can also improve clarity. You may also choose to illustrate the same data successively in two distinct formats, perhaps a line graph followed by two pie graphs. Your central goal is to ensure your visual aid is clear.

Methods and Materials

If you have been asked to give a presentation on a new product idea that a team within your organization is considering, how might you approach the challenge? You may consider a chronological organization pattern, starting with background, current market, and a trend analysis of what is to come—fair enough, but how will you make it vivid for your audience? How to represent information visually is a significant challenge, and you have several options.

You may choose to use a chart or diagram to show a timeline of events to date, from the first meeting about the proposed product to the results from the latest focus group. This timeline may work for you, but let’s say you would like to get into the actual decision-making process that motivated your team to design the product with specific features in the first place. You may decide to use decision trees (or tree diagrams) showing the variables and products in place at the beginning of your discussions, and how each decision led to the next, bringing you to the decision-making point where you are today.

Figure 11.5

Visual aids make it vivid for your audience.

Gareth Saunders – Welcome to Powerpoint – CC BY-SA 2.0.

To complement this comprehensive guide and help make a transition to current content areas of questions, you may use a bar or pie graph to show the percentage of competing products in the market. If you have access to the Internet and a projector, you may use a topographical map showing a three-dimensional rendering of the local areas most likely to find your product attractive. If actual hills and valleys have nothing to do with your project, you can still represent the data you have collected in three dimensions. Then you may show a comparable graph illustrating the distribution of products and their relative degree of market penetration.

Figure 11.6

Bar and pie graphs can clearly demonstrate results.

Christopher Porter – EuroTrip2006 – Total Expenses – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Finally, you may move to the issue of results, and present the audience with a model of your product and one from a competitor, asking which they prefer. The object may be just the visual aid you need to make your point and reinforce the residual message. When we can see, feel, touch, or be in close proximity to an object it often has a greater impact. In a world of digital images and special effects, objects presented in real time can still make a positive effect on the audience.

Additional visual aids you may choose include—but are not limited to—sound and music, video, and even yourself. If your speech is about how to use the product, your demonstration may just be the best visual aid.

You will want to give some thought to how to portray your chart, graph, or object when it’s time to use your visual aids. The chalk or white board is common way of presenting visual aids, but it can get messy. Your instructor may write key words or diagrams on the boards while discussing a textbook chapter, but can you read his or her writing? The same lesson holds true for you. If you are going to use a white board and have a series of words on it, write them out clearly before you start your presentation.

Flip charts on a pedestal can also serve to show a series of steps or break a chart down into its basic components. A poster board is another common way of organizing your visual aids before a speech, but given its often one-time use, it is losing out to the computer screen. It is, however, portable and allows you a large “blank page” with which to express your ideas.

Handouts may also serve to communicate complex or detailed information to the audience, but be careful never to break handout rule number one: never give handouts to the audience at the beginning of your speech. Where do you want the audience to look—at you or at the handout? Many novice speakers might be tempted to say the handout, but you will no doubt recognize how that diverts and divides the audience’s attention. People will listen to the words from the handout in their minds and tune you out. They will read at their own pace and have questions. They may even be impolite enough to use them as fans or paper airplanes. Handouts can be your worst enemy. If you need to use one, state at the beginning of the speech that you will be providing one at the conclusion of your presentation. This will alleviate the audience’s worry about capturing all your content by taking notes, and keep their attention focused on you while you speak.

Transparencies and slides have been replaced by computer-generated slide show programs like PowerPoint by Microsoft, which we will discuss in greater detail later in this section. These programs can be very helpful in presenting visual information, but because computers and projectors sometimes break down and fail to work as planned, you need a plan B. You may need a poster board, or to write on the whiteboard or to have a handout in reserve, but a Plan B is always a good idea when it comes to presentations that integrate technology. You may arrive at your destination and find the equipment is no longer available, is incompatible with your media storage device, or is simply not working, but the show must go on.

Video clips, such as those you might find on YouTube, can also be effective visual aids. However, as with handouts, there is one concern: You don’t want the audience to want to watch the video more than they want to tune into your presentation. How do you prevent this? Keep the clip short and make sure it reinforces the central message of your presentation. Always stop speaking before the audience stops listening, and the same holds true for the mesmerizing force of moving images on a screen. People are naturally attracted to them and will get “sucked into” your video example rather quickly. Be a good editor, introduce the clip and state what will happen out loud, point out a key aspect of it to the audience while it plays (overlap), and then make a clear transitional statement as you turn it off. Transitions are often the hardest part of any speech as the audience can get off track, and video clips are one of the most challenging visual aids you can choose because of their power to attract attention. Use that power wisely.

Preparing Visual Aids

Get started early so that you have time to create or research visual aids that will truly support your presentation, not just provide “fluff.” Make sure you use a font or image large enough to be legible for those in the back of the room, and that you actually test your visual aids before the day of your presentation. Ask a friend to stand at the back of the room and read or interpret your visual aid. If you are using computer-generated slides, try them out in a practice setting, not just on your computer screen. The slides will look different when projected. Allow time for revision based on what you learn.

Your visual aids should meet the following criteria:

• Big . They should be legible for everyone, and should be “back row certified.”
• Clear . Your audience should “get it” the first time they see it.
• Simple . They should serve to simplify the concepts they illustrate.
• Consistent . They should reinforce continuity by using the same visual style.

Using Visual Aids

Here are three general guidelines to follow when using visual aids (McLean, S., 2003). Here are some do s and don’t s:

• Do make a clear connection between your words and the visual aid for the audience.
• Do not distract the audience with your visual aid, blocking their view of you or adjusting the visual aid repeatedly while trying to speak.
• Do speak to your audience—not to the whiteboard, the video, or other visual aids.

The timing of your presentation, and of your visual aids, can also have good or bad consequences. According to a popular joke, a good way to get your boss to approve just about anything is to schedule a meeting after lunch, turn the lights down, and present some boring PowerPoint slides. While the idea of a drowsy boss signing off on a harebrained project is amusing, in reality you will want to use visual aids not as a sleeping potion but as a strategy to keep your presentation lively and interesting.

Becoming proficient at using visual aids takes time and practice, and the more you practice before your speech, the more comfortable you will be with your visual aids and the role they serve in illustrating your points. Planning ahead before speaking will help, but when it comes time to actually give your speech, make sure they work for the audience as they should. Speaking to a visual aid (or reading it with your back to the audience) is not an effective strategy. You should know your material well enough that you refer to a visual aid, not rely on it.

Using PowerPoint as a Visual Aid

PowerPoint and similar visual representation programs can be an effective tool to help audiences remember your message, but they can also be an annoying distraction to your speech. How you prepare your slides and use the tool will determine your effectiveness.

PowerPoint is a slideware program that you have no doubt seen used in class, presentation at work, or perhaps used yourself to support a presentation. PowerPoint and similar slideware programs provide templates for creating electronic slides to present visual information to the audience, reinforcing the verbal message. You’ll be able to import, or cut and paste, words from text files, images, or video clips to create slides to represent your ideas. You can even incorporate Web links. When using any software program, it’s always a good idea to experiment with it long before you intend to use it, explore its many options and functions, and see how it can be an effective tool for you.

Intercultural Communication

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PowerPoint slides can connect words with images.

At first, you might be overwhelmed by the possibilities, and you might be tempted to use all the bells, whistles, and sound effects, not to mention the tumbling, flying, and animated graphics. If used wisely, a dissolve or key transition can be like a well-executed scene from a major motion picture film and lead your audience to the next point. But if used indiscriminately, it can annoy the audience to the point where they cringe in anticipation of the sound effect at the start of each slide. This danger is inherent in the tool, but you are in charge of it and can make wise choices that enhance the understanding and retention of your information.

The first point to consider is what is the most important visual aid? The answer is you, the speaker. You will facilitate the discussion, give life to the information, and help the audience correlate the content to your goal or purpose. You don’t want to be in a position where the PowerPoint presentation is the main focus and you are on the side of the stage, simply helping the audience follow along. It should support you in your presentation, rather than the other way around. Just as there is a number one rule for handouts, there is also one for PowerPoints: do not use PowerPoints as a read-aloud script for your speech. The PowerPoints should amplify and illustrate your main points, not reproduce everything you are going to say.

Your pictures are the second area of emphasis you’ll want to consider. The tool will allow you to show graphs, charts and illustrate relationships that words may only approach in terms of communication, but your verbal support of the visual images will make all the difference. Dense pictures or complicated graphics will confuse more than clarify. Choose clear images that have an immediate connection to both your content and the audience, tailored to their specific needs. After images, consider only key words that can be easily read to accompany your pictures. The fewer words the better: try to keep each slide to a total word count of less than ten words. Do not use full sentences. Using key words provides support for your verbal discussion, guiding you as well as your audience. The key words can serve as signposts or signal words related to key ideas.

A natural question at this point is, “How do I communicate complex information simply?” The answer comes with several options. The visual representation on the screen is for support and illustration. Should you need to communicate more technical, complex, or in-depth information in a visual way, consider preparing a handout to distribute at the conclusion of your speech. You may also consider using a printout of your slide show with a “notes” section, but if you distribute it at the beginning of your speech, you run the risk of turning your presentation into a guided reading exercise and possibly distracting or losing members of the audience. Everyone reads at a different pace and takes notes in their own way. You don’t want to be in the position of going back and forth between slides to help people follow along.

Another point to consider is how you want to use the tool to support your speech and how your audience will interpret its presentation. Most audiences wouldn’t want to read a page of text—as you might see in this book—on the big screen. They’ll be far more likely to glance at the screen and assess the information you present in relation to your discussion. Therefore, it is key to consider one main idea, relationship, or point per slide. The use of the tool should be guided with the idea that its presentation is for the audience’s benefit, not yours. People often understand pictures and images more quickly and easily than text, and you can use this to your advantage, using the knowledge that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Use of Color

People love color, and understandably your audience will appreciate the visual stimulation of a colorful presentation. If you have ever seen a car painted a custom color that just didn’t attract you, or seen colors put together in ways that made you wonder what people were thinking when they did that, you will recognize that color can also distract and turn off an audience.

Color is a powerful way to present information, and the power should be used wisely. You will be selecting which color you want to use for headers or key words, and how they relate the colors in the visual images. Together, your images, key words, and the use of color in fonts, backgrounds, table, and graphs can have a significant impact on your audience. You will need to give some thought and consideration to what type of impact you want to make, how it will contribute or possibly distract, and what will work well for you to produce an effective and impressive presentation.

There are inherent relationships between colors, and while you may have covered some of this information in art classes you have taken, it is valuable to review here. According to the standard color wheel, colors are grouped into primary, secondary, and tertiary categories. Primary colors are the colors from which other colors are made through various combinations. Secondary colors represent a combination of two primary colors, while tertiary colors are made from combinations of primary and secondary colors.

Figure 11.7 Color Wheel

Michael Hernandez – color wheel – CC BY 2.0.

• Primary colors . Red, blue and yellow
• Secondary colors . Green, violet, and orange
• Tertiary colors . Red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green, yellow-orange, and yellow-green

Colors have relationships depending on their location on the wheel. Colors that are opposite each other are called complementary and they contrast, creating a dynamic effect. Analogous colors are located next to each other and promote harmony, continuity, and sense of unity.

Your audience comes first: when considering your choice of colors to use, legibility must be your priority. Contrast can help the audience read your key terms more easily. Also, focus on the background color and its relation to the images you plan to incorporate to insure they complement each other. Consider repetition of color, from your graphics to your text, to help unify each slide. To reduce visual noise, try not to use more than two or three additional colors. Use colors sparingly to make a better impact, and consider the use of texture and reverse color fonts (the same as a background or white) as an option.

Be aware that many people are blue-green colorblind, and that red-green colorblindness is also fairly common. With this in mind, choose colors that most audience members will be able to differentiate. If you are using a pie chart, for example, avoid putting a blue segment next to a green one. Use labeling so that even if someone is totally colorblind they will be able to tell the relative sizes of the pie segments and what they signify.

Color is also a matter of culture. Some colors may be perceived as formal or informal, or masculine or feminine. Recognize that red is usually associated with danger, while green signals “go.” Make sure the color associated with the word is reflected in your choice. If you have a key word about nature, but the color is metallic, the contrast may not contribute to the rhetorical situation and confuse the audience.

Seeking a balance between professionalism and attractiveness may seem to be a challenge, but experiment and test your drafts with friends to see what works for you. Also consider examining other examples, commonly available on the Internet, but retain the viewpoint that not everything online is effective nor should it be imitated. There are predetermined color schemes already incorporated into PowerPoint that you can rely on for your presentation.

We’ve given consideration to color in relation to fonts and the representation of key words, but we also need to consider font size and selection. PowerPoint will have default settings for headlines and text, but you will need to consider what is most appropriate for your rhetorical situation. Always think about the person sitting in the back of the room. The title size should be at least forty points, and the body text (used sparingly) should be at least thirty-two points.

Figure 11.8

Visual aids should be clear from the back of the room.

Martin Roell – Powerpoint + Sonne = … – CC BY-SA 2.0.

In Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators (Kostelnick, C., and Roberts, D., 1998), Charles Kostelnick and David Roberts provide a valuable discussion of fonts, font styles, and what to choose to make an impact depending on your rhetorical situation. One good principle they highlight is that sans serif fonts such as Arial work better than serif fonts like Times New Roman for images projected onto a screen. The thin lines and extra aspects to serif the font may not portray themselves well on a large screen or contribute to clarity. To you this may mean that you choose Arial or a similar font to enhance clarity and ease of reading. Kostelnick and Roberts also discuss the use of grouping strategies to improve the communication of information (Kostelnick, C., and Roberts, D., 1998). Bullets, the use of space, similarity, and proximity all pertain to the process of perception, which differs from one person to another.

Helpful Hints for Visual Aids

As we’ve discussed, visual aids can be a powerful tool when used effectively, but can also run the risk of dominating your presentation. As a speaker, you will need to consider your audience and how the portrayal of images, text, graphic, animated sequences, or sound files will contribute or detract from your presentation. Here is a brief list of hints to keep in mind as you prepare your presentation.

• Keep visual aids simple.
• Use one key idea per slide.
• Avoid clutter, noise, and overwhelming slides.
• Use large, bold fonts that the audience can read from at least twenty feet from the screen.
• Use contrasting colors to create a dynamic effect.
• Use analogous colors to unify your presentation.
• Use clip art with permission and sparingly.
• Edit and proofread each slide with care and caution.
• Use copies of your visuals available as handouts after your presentation.
• Check the presentation room beforehand.
• With a PowerPoint presentation, or any presentation involving technology, have a backup plan, such as your visuals printed on transparencies, should unexpected equipment or interface compatibility problems arise

Becoming proficient at using visual aids takes time and practice. The more you practice before your speech, the more comfortable you will be with your visual aids and the role they serve in illustrating your message. Giving thought to where to place visual aids before speaking helps, but when the time comes to actually give your speech, make sure you reassess your plans and ensure that they work for the audience as they should. Speaking to a visual aid (or reading it to the audience) is not an effective strategy. Know your material well enough that you refer to your visual aids, not rely on them.

Key Takeaway

Strategically chosen visual aids will serve to illustrate, complement, and reinforce your verbal message.

• Look at the picture of the blankets above. Write copy for the left part of the slide and decide what colors would best complement the message. Share your results with the class.
• Create your own presentation of three to five slides with no less than three images and three words per slide. Share the results with the class.
• Explore PowerPoint or a similar slideware program and find your favorite feature. Write a series of steps on how to access and use it. Share your results with the class.
• Create a slide presentation that defines and explains your favorite feature in the program and include at least one point on its advantage for the audience. Share the results with the class.

Kostelnick, C., & Roberts, D. (1998). Designing visual language: Strategies for professional communicators . Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

McLean, S. (2003). The basics of speech communication . Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Business Communication for Success: GVSU Edition Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Chapter Fourteen – Presentation Aids

“Grifo mágico”  by emijrp.  CC-BY .

“I know you can’t read this from the back there,” the presenter apologizes to a screen so full of words you would think the entire speech had been crammed into one slide. This is just the first of a seemingly endless string of slides I can’t read, charts so full of numbers I can’t decipher the meaning, and clip art so clichéd I can’t help but roll my eyes and sigh. It is not long before I’m presented with an incredibly dense graph I can’t make any sense of since he keeps interrupting my concentration with actual talking. “When is he going to come to the point already?” I think to myself as I start to doodle in the margins of the handout of the PowerPoint slides for the very talk I’m currently sitting through. Why did he even bother with a presentation? He could have just emailed us all of the handout and saved us from this painful, dull spectacle. As he reads from his slides and belabors his statistics, my mind drifts to grocery lists and the upcoming weekend. I can think of a hundred better uses for an hour.

It seems nearly impossible to see a presentation that doesn’t revolve around a lengthy PowerPoint, so much so that you might think it was a requirement for giving a speech. The phrase “death by PowerPoint” was coined in response to the ubiquitous, wordy, and intellectually deadening presentations that focus on the slides rather than the content or the presenter. With the speaker reading directly from the slides, or worse, showing slides with text so small that it can’t be read, viewers are often left wondering what the need for the presentation is at all. A simple handout would convey the message and save everyone’s time. PowerPoint, however, is just one of the visual aids available to you as a speaker. Your ability to incorporate the right visual aid at the right time and in the right format can have a powerful effect on your audience. Because your message is the central focus of your speech, you only want to add visual aids that enhance your message, clarify the meaning of your words, target the emotions of your audience, and/or show what words fail to clearly describe.

A visual image is a simple thing, a picture that enters the eyes. – Roy H. Williams  

“mwdCyborgLenses”  by em den.  CC-BY-NC-SA .

Learning how to create effective visuals that resonate with your audience is important for a quality presentation. Understanding basic principles of how visual information is processed alone and in combination with audio information can make or break your visuals’ effectiveness and impact. Incorporating visuals into your speech that complement your words rather than stand in place of them or distract from them, will set you apart from other presenters, increase your credibility, and make a bigger and more memorable impact on your audience.

Types of Visual Aids

In the past, transparencies displayed with overhead projectors, posters, and flip charts were common visual aids, but these have mostly been replaced with computer technology. For many people, the term “visual aids” for presentations or speeches is synonymous with PowerPoint (often long, dry, painful PowerPoint at that), but this is just one type of visual aid. You should consider all the available options to determine what will be most effective and appropriate for your presentation.

If you wear clothes that don’t suit you, you’re a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better. – Vivienne Westwood

Personal Appearance

Some people choose to dress up as part of their presentation, and this can help set the tone of the speech or reinforce a specific point. A speaker may wear a handmade sweater in a talk about knitting in order to inspire others to begin the hobby. Another speaker may opt for a firefighter’s uniform in a speech about joining the local volunteer fire department in an effort to appeal to the respect most people have for people in uniform. As mentioned in the previous chapter, if you’re delivering a speech on sleep deprivation, wearing pj’s  could be appropriate!

If you wear clothes that don’t suit you, you’re a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better . – Vivienne Westwood

“Firefighters Onboard Royal Navy Destroyer HMS Edinburgh” by UK Ministry of Defence.  CC-BY-NC .

If you aren’t dressing in relation to your topic, you should dress appropriately for your audience and venue. A presentation to a professional audience or at a professional conference would lend itself to appropriate business attire. If you are giving a presentation to your local Girl Scout troop, more casual clothing may be the best choice. Any time you are doing a demonstration, make sure you are dressed appropriately to give the demonstration. It is difficult for a speaker to show how to correctly put on a rock-climbing harness if she is wearing a skirt the day of the presentation.

Beyond dressing appropriately for your audience and topic, the audience will make judgments about you even before your presentation begins. Your dress, mannerisms, the way you greet the audience when they are arriving, how you are introduced, and the first words out of your mouth all impact your credibility and ability to connect with your audience. Make sure you are calm and welcoming to your audience when they arrive and greet them in a professional manner. Your credibility and professionalism suffer when the audience arrives and you are busy scrambling around attempting to finish your preparations. [1]

Objects and Props

“Honestly I Don’t Remember Much from This Lecture”  by Daniel Lu.  CC-BY-NC-ND .

Objects and props, such as a bicycle helmet for a speech on bike safety or an actual sample of the product you are trying to sell, can greatly enhance your presentation. Seeing the actual item will often make it easier for your audience to understand your meaning and will help you connect with your audience on an emotional level. Props can be used as part of demonstrations (discussed below) or as a stand-alone item that you refer to in your speech.

There are several important considerations for using props in your presentation. If you have a large audience, showing the prop at the front of the venue may mean that audience members can’t see the item. The alternative to this is to pass the item around, though Young and Travis [2] advise caution in passing objects around during your speech, as most people will be seeing the object after you have moved on with your talk. Having your prop out of sync with your presentation, either as it is passed around disrupting your audience’s attention or by having your prop visible when you aren’t talking about it, is distracting to your audience and message. To make the most effective use of props in your presentation, carefully consider how the object will be visible to your entire audience when you are speaking about it, and make sure it is out of sight when you are not.

Demonstration

“A dad teaches his daughter the hula hoop at the 2011 Downton Cuckoo Fair” by Anguskirk.  CC-BY-NC-ND .

A demonstration can serve two different purposes in a speech. First, it can be used to “wow” the audience. Showing off the features of your new product, illustrating the catastrophic failure of a poorly tied climbing knot, or launching a cork across the room during a chemistry experiment are all ways of capturing the audience’s attention. Demonstration should not be gimmicky, but should add value to your presentation. When done well, it can be the memorable moment from your speech, so make sure it reinforces the central message of your talk.

Demonstration can also be used to show how something is done. People have different learning styles, and a process demonstration can help visual learners better understand the concept being taught. Consider for a moment the difference between reading the instructions on how to perform CPR, watching someone perform CPR, and trying CPR on the training dummy. As evidenced by the huge number of online videos illustrating how to do something, there is great value in watching while you learn a new task.

If your presentation includes a process where seeing will improve understanding, consider including a demonstration.

Because you have a limited time to present, make sure your demonstrations are succinct, well-rehearsed, and visible to the entire audience. Be prepared for the demonstration to fail and have a back-up plan in place. It is better to move forward with your presentation than to fret with trying to get your demonstration perfect or fixed. However, if you are providing a demonstration of your new product, make sure it is as error free as possible. If you can’t be positive the product will perform as expected, it is better to skip the demonstration.

Posters and Flip Charts

If you are presenting to a small audience, around a dozen people, you may choose to use a poster rather than PowerPoint. The focus of your poster should be to support your core message and can be left behind to remind those in attendance of your presentation after you have left. Posters should look professional (e.g., not handwritten), be visible to everyone in the room, and follow design rules covered later in this chapter. Before your presentation, you should ask whether posters must be hung or be free standing. For posters that will be hung from a wall, sturdy poster or matte boards will suffice. If your poster is going to be free standing or if you are going to use the same poster for multiple presentations, you should consider using a tri-fold display board.

“Dad’s Jr. Year Science Fair Project”  by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos.  CC-BY-NC-SA .

Other text-based visual aids include white boards and flip charts. Both can be used to write or draw on during the presentation and should be used with several caveats. Writing during your presentation actually takes away from your speaking time, so make sure to factor this into your speaking time. Speaking and writing at the same time can be tricky because the audience will have a difficult time processing what they are hearing when they are also trying to read what you write. Additionally, if you are writing, you need to be careful not to turn your back on your audience, which is makes it harder for them to hear you and for you to connect with your audience. Legible handwriting that can be seen at a distance is of prime importance, so using these kinds of visual aids should be limited to small audiences. While some speakers write and draw to highlight important points, this takes an enormous amount of skill and practice. For those with less developed skills, flip charts are best limited to situations where audience input is necessary for the direction or continuation of the presentation. [3]

The soul never thinks without a picture. – Aristotle

Audio and Video

A large amount of digitized audio and video is now available to be included and embedded in your presentation. Select short clips; Young and Travis [4]  recommend only 10 – 20 seconds, but this will depend in part on the length of the presentation, the purpose of the presentation, and clip content and relevance. You should not have a presentation primarily composed of audio/video clips. Select only clips that reinforce the message or serve as an appropriate segue into your next topic.

When including audio or video in your speech, there are several technical considerations. It is important that the clip be properly cued to start at exactly where you want it to begin playing. It distracts from both your audience’s attention and your credibility when you are fumbling with technology during a speech. It is also important that your file format can be played on the computer you are using. Since not all computers will play all file formats, be sure to test playability and audio volume before your presentation. Again, going back to providing a professional appearance from your first interaction with your audience, you should iron out the technical details before they enter the room. As with a demonstration, if your clip isn’t playing properly, move on rather than attempt to correct the issue. Fumbling with technology is a waste of your audience’s valuable time.

There are many schools of thought on the use of handouts during a presentation. The most common current practice is that the presenters provide a copy of their PowerPoint slides to the participants before or after the presentation. This is so common that some academic and professional conferences require presenters to submit their slides prior to the event, so copies of the slides can be made for each attendee. Despite this prevailing trend, you should avoid using your slides as handouts because they serve different purposes. Using your presentation slides as the handout both shortchanges your slides and fails as a handout.

“Lt. Lydia Battey distributes handouts”  by Kerryl Cacho. Public domain.

Handouts are best used to supplement the content of your talk. If you are providing statistical data, your slide may only show the relevant statistic focusing on the conclusion you want your audience to draw. Your handout, on the other hand, can contain the full table of data. If you need to show a complex diagram or chart, a handout will be more legible than trying to cram all that information on a slide. Since you need to simplify the data to make it understandable on a slide, the handout can contain the evidence for your message in a way that is legible, detailed, complex, and shows respect for the audience’s time and intelligence. [5]

You don’t need to include everything in your talk, and you don’t need to pack all your information into your slides. Write a handout document with as much detail as you want and keep the slides simple. Presenters often feel the need to display all the data and information they have so they will appear knowledgeable, informed, and thoroughly prepared. You can help ease this feeling by creating a handout with all of the detailed data you wish, which leaves your slides open to focus on your key message. [6]

There are many true statements about complex topics that are too long to fit on a PowerPoint slide. – Edward Tufte

Crafting an appropriate handout will take additional time for the presenter but doing so will result in a take-away document that will stand on its own and a slide show that focuses on effective visual content. Duarte (2008) and Tufte (2003) recommend handouts only for dense, detailed information. Reynolds [7]  expands on this idea, noting that your handout needs to be complete enough to stand in your place since you won’t be there to present the information or answer questions.

When to distribute handouts is also heavily debated. So common is the practice of providing handouts at the beginning of a presentation that it may seem wrong to break the convention. It is important to understand, however, that if people have paper in front of them while you are speaking, their attention will be split between the handout, your other visual aids, and your words. To counter this, you might consider distributing handouts as they are needed during the presentation and allowing time for people to review them before continuing on. [8]  This may not be a viable option for shorter presentations, and the interruption in the flow of the presentation may be hard to recover from. Unless having the documents in front of your audience is absolutely critical to the success of the presentation, handouts should be distributed at the end of the presentation.

“Steve Jobs Presentation”  by Ken.gz.  CC-BY .

Slideware  is a generic term for the software used create and display slide shows such as  Microsoft PowerPoint ,  Apple iWorks Keynote ,  Google Drive Presentation ,  Zoho Show  and others. Composed of individual slides, collectively known as the  slide deck , slideware is a de facto standard for presentation visual aids despite criticisms and complaints about the format. In truth, the problem is not with the software but in the use of the software. The focus of much of the remainder of this chapter will be suggestions and best practices for creating effective slide decks that will be high impact and avoid many of the complaints of slideware detractors. Before this discussion, there are two distinct slideware presentation styles that should be mentioned.

A picture is a poem without words. – Horace

Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha  is a method of presenting using a slide deck of 20 slides that display for 20 seconds per slide, advance automatically, and generally contain no text. [9] This method began in 2003 as a way to contain the length of presentations of architects and continues to grow in popularity, but is still reserved mostly for people in creative industries. [10] Because of the restrictive format, Pecha Kucha-style presentations help the speaker practice editing, pacing, connecting with the audience, focusing on the message, and using images in place of words. [11]

While not quite slideware,  Prezi  is digital presentation software that breaks away from the standard slide deck presentation. It requires users to plot out their themes before adding primarily image-focused content. [12]  Instead of flipping through the slide deck, the presenter zooms in and out of the presentation to visually demonstrate connections not available in other slideware. The design of the software lends itself toward more rapidly changing visuals. This helps to keep the viewer engaged but also lends itself to over-populating the blank canvas with images. [13]

Prezi’s fast-moving images and, at times, unusual movement can make users dizzy or disoriented. Careful work is needed during planning and practice so that the point of the talk isn’t the wow factor of the Prezi software, but that your visuals enhance your presentation. The best way to learn more about this emerging tool is to visit the Prezi website to view examples .

If opting to use Prezi in a corporate environment, you should strongly consider one of the paid options for the sole purpose of removing the Prezi logo from the presentation.

Now that you have a better understanding of the different types of presentation aids you could employ during your speech, let’s discuss effective design principles of visual aids.

Design Principles

Slide and slide show design have a major impact on your ability to get your message across to your audience. Research shows that people have trouble grasping information when it comes at them simultaneously. “They will either listen to you or read your slides; they cannot do both.” [14]  This leaves you, the presenter, with a lot of power to direct or scatter your audience’s attention. This section will serve as an overview of basic design considerations that even novices can use to improve their slides.

Figure 13.1  by the Public Speaking Project.  CC-BY-NC-ND .

First and foremost, design with your audience in mind. Your slide show is not your outline. The show is also not your handout. As discussed earlier, you can make a significantly more meaningful, content-rich handout that complements your presentation if you do not try to save time by making a slide show that serves as both. Keep your slides short, create a separate handout if needed, and write as many notes for yourself as you need.

All decisions, from the images you use to their placement, should be done with a focus on your message, your medium, and your audience. Each slide should reinforce or enhance your message, so make conscious decisions about each element and concept you include [15]  and edit mercilessly. Taken a step further, graphic designer Robin Williams [16]  suggests each element be placed on the slide deliberately in relation to every other element on the slide.

Providing the right amount of information, neither too much nor too little, is one of the key aspects in effective communication. [17]  See Figure 13.1 as an example of slides with too little or too much information. The foundation of this idea is that if the viewers have too little information, they must struggle to put the pieces of the presentation together. Most people, however, include too much information (e.g., slides full of text, meaningless images, overly complicated charts), which taxes the audience’s ability to process the message. “There is simply a limit to a person’s ability to process new information efficiently and effectively.” [18]  As a presenter, reducing the amount of information directed at your audience (words, images, sounds, etc.) will help them to better remember your message. [19]  In this case, less is actually more.

Figure 13.2 by the Public Speaking Project. CC-BY-NC-ND .

The first strategy to keeping your slides simple is to include only one concept or idea per slide. If you need more than one slide, use it, but don’t cram more than one idea on a slide. While many have tried to prescribe the number of slides you need based on the length of your talk, there is no formula that works for every presentation. Use only the number of slides necessary to communicate your message, and make sure the number of slides corresponds to the amount of time allotted for your speech. Practice with more and fewer slides and more and less content on each slide to find the balance between too much information and too little.

With simplicity in mind, the goal is to have a slide that can be understood in 3 seconds. Think of it like a billboard you are passing on the highway. [20] You can achieve this by reducing the amount of irrelevant information, also known as noise , in your slide as much as possible. This might include eliminating background images, using clear icons and images, or creating simplified graphs. Your approach should be to remove as much from your slide as possible until it no longer makes any sense if you remove more. [21]

Slide Layout

Figure 13.3  by the Public Speaking Project.  CC-BY-NC-ND .

It is easy to simply open up your slideware and start typing in the bullet points that outline your talk. If you do this, you will likely fall into the traps for which PowerPoint is infamous. Presentation design experts Reynolds [22]  and Duarte [23]  both recommend starting with paper and pen. This will help you break away from the text-based, bullet-filled slide shows we all dread. Instead, consider how you can turn your words and concepts into images. Don’t let the software lead you into making a mediocre slide show.

Regarding slide design, focus on simplicity. Don’t over-crowd your slide with text and images. Cluttered slides are hard to understand (see Figure 13.2). Leaving empty space, also known as  white space , gives breathing room to your design. The white space actually draws attention to your focus point and makes your slide appear more elegant and professional. Using repetition of color, font, images, and layout throughout your presentation will help tie all of your slides together. This is especially important if a group is putting visuals together collaboratively. If you have handouts, they should also match this formatting in order to convey a more professional look and tie all your pieces together. [24]

Another general principle is to use contrast to highlight your message. Contrast should not be subtle. Make type sizes significantly different. Make contrasting image placements, such as horizontal and vertical, glaringly obvious. A general principle to follow: if things are not the same, then make them very, very different, [25]  as in Figure 13.3.

A common layout design is called the  rule of thirds . If you divide the screen using two imaginary lines horizontally and two vertically, you end up with nine sections. The most visually interesting and pleasing portions of the screen will be at the points where the lines intersect.

Aligning your text and images with these points is preferred to centering everything on the screen. [26] [27]  See Figure 13.4. Feel free to experiment with the right and left aligned content for contrast and interest. Sticking with a centered layout means more work trying to make the slide interesting. [28]

Understanding how people view images (and thus slides) can help you direct the viewer’s attention to the main point of your slide. In countries that read text from left to right and top to bottom, like English-speaking countries, people tend to also read images and slides the same way. Starting in the upper left of the screen, they read in a  Z pattern , exiting the page in the bottom right corner unless their vision is side-tracked by the objects they are looking at (as in Figure 13.5).

Viewers’ eyes are scanning from focus point to focus point in an image, so you need to consciously create visual cues to direct them to the relevant information. Cues can be created subtly by the placement of objects in the slide, by showing movement, or more obviously by using a simple arrow. [29]  Make sure all people and pets are facing into your slide and preferably at your main point, as in Figure 13.6. If your slide contains a road, path, car, plane, etc., have them also facing into your slide. When the natural motion or gaze of your images points away from your slide, your viewers look that way too. Being aware of this and addressing the natural tendencies of people when viewing images can help you select images and design slides that keep the viewer engaged in your message. [30]

Backgrounds and Effects

PowerPoint and other slideware have a variety of templates containing backgrounds that are easy to implement for a consistent slide show. Most of them, however, contain distracting graphics that are counter to the simplicity you are aiming for in order to produce a clear message. It is best to use solid colors, if you even need a background at all. For some slide shows, you can make the slides with full-screen images, thus eliminating the need for a background color.

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors. – George Santayana

Should you choose to use a background color, make sure you are consistent throughout your presentation. Different colors portray different meanings, but much of this is cultural and contextual, so there are few hard and fast rules about the meaning of colors. One universal recommendation is to avoid the color red because it has been shown to reduce your ability to think clearly. Bright colors, such as yellow, pink, and orange, should also be avoided as background colors, as they are too distracting. Black, on the other hand, is generally associated with sophistication and can be a very effective background as long as there is sufficient contrast with the other elements on your slide. [31]

When designing your presentation, it is tempting to show off your tech skills with glitzy transitions, wipes, fades, moving text, sounds, and a variety of other actions. These are distracting to your audience and should be avoided. They draw attention away from you and your message, instead focusing the audience’s attention on the screen. Since people naturally look at what is moving and expect it to mean something, meaningless effects, no matter how subtle, distract your audience, and affect their ability to grasp the content. Make sure that all your changes are meaningful and reinforce your message [32] .

There are complicated and fascinating biological and psychological processes associated with color and color perception that are beyond the scope of this chapter. Because color can have such a huge impact on the ability to see and understand your visuals, this section will explore basic rules and recommendations for working with color.

Figure 13.7  by the Public Speaking Project.  CC-BY-NC-ND .

Much of what we perceive in terms of a color is based on what color is next to it. Be sure to use colors that contrast so they can be easily distinguished from each other (think yellow and dark blue for high contrast, not dark blue and purple). High contrast improves visibility, particularly at a distance. To ensure you have sufficient contrast, you can view your presentation in greyscale either in the software if available or by printing out your slides on a black and white printer. [33]

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design — it reinforces it. – Pierre Bonnard

As seen in Figure 13.7, warm colors (reds, oranges, yellows) appear to come to the foreground when set next to a cool color (blues, grays, purples) which recede into the background. Tints (pure color mixed with white, think pink) stand out against a darker background. Shades (pure color mixed with black, think maroon) recede into a light background. [34]  If you want something to stand out, these color combination rules can act as a guide.

Figure 13.8  by the Public Speaking Project.  CC-BY-NC-ND .

Avoid using red and green closely together. Red-green color blindness is the predominate form of color blindness, meaning that the person cannot distinguish between those two colors (Vorick, 2011). There are other forms of color blindness, and you can easily check to see if your visuals will be understandable to everyone using an online tool such as the  Coblis Color Blindness Simulator to preview images as a color-blind person would see it. Certain red-blue pairings can be difficult to look at for the non-color blind. These colors appear to vibrate when adjacent to each other and are distracting and sometimes unpleasant to view. [35]

With all these rules in place, selecting a  color palette , the group of colors to use throughout your presentation, can be daunting. Some color pairs, like complementary colors or  analogous colors  as in Figure 13.8, are naturally pleasing to the eye and can be easy options for the color novice. There are also online tools for selecting pleasing color palettes using standard color pairings including  Kuler  and  Color Scheme Designer . You can also use websites like  Colorbrewer  to help identify an appropriate palette of colors that are visually distinct, appropriate for the colorblind, and that will photocopy well, should you decide to also include this information in a handout.

I’m a visual thinker, not a language-based thinker. My brain is like Google Images. – Temple Grandin  

Figure 13.9  by the Public Speaking Project.  CC-BY-NC-ND .

There are thousands of fonts available today. One might even say there has been a renaissance in font design with the onset of the digital age. Despite many beautiful options, it is best to stick to standard fonts that are considered screen friendly. These include the serif fonts  Times New Roman, Georgia, and Palatino, and the  sans serif  fonts Ariel, Helvetica, Tahoma, and Veranda. [36]  These fonts work well with the limitations of computer screens and are legible from a distance if sized appropriately. Other non-standard fonts, while attractive and eye-catching, may not display properly on all computers. If the font isn’t installed on the computer you are presenting from, the default font will be used which alters the text and design of the slide.

Readability is a top concern with font use, particularly for those at the back of your audience, furthest from the screen. After you have selected a font (see previous paragraph), make sure that the font size is large enough for everyone to read clearly. If you have the opportunity to use the presentation room before the event, view your slides from the back of the room. They should be clearly visible. This is not always possible and should not be done immediately preceding your talk, as you won’t have time to effectively edit your entire presentation. Presentation guru Duarte [37]  describes an ingenious way to test visibility from your own computer.

Measure your monitor diagonally in inches, display your slides, then step back the same number of feet as you measured on your monitor in inches. For example, if you have a 17-inch screen, step back 17 feet to see what is legible.

Create your own visual style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others. – Orson Welles

In addition to font style and size, there are other font “rules” to improve your slides:

• Don’t use decorative, script, or visually complex fonts.
• Never use the Comic Sans font if you want to retain any credibility with your audience.
• If you must use more than one font, use one serif font and one sans serif font.
• Use the same font(s) and size(s) consistently throughout your presentation.
• Don’t use all upper case or all bold.
• Avoid small caps and all word art, shadows, outlines, stretching text, and other visual effects.
• Use italics and underlines only for their intended purposes, not for design.

While there are many rules listed here, they can be summarized as” keep it as simple as possible.” [38]  See Figure 13.9 for examples of poor font choices.

Nothing is more hotly debated in slide design than the amount of text that should be on a slide. Godin says “no more than six words on a slide. EVER.” [39]  Other common approaches include the 5×5 rule — 5 lines of text, 5 words per line—and similar 6×6 and 7×7 rules. [40]  Even with these recommendations, it is still painfully common to see slides with so much text on them that they can’t be read by the audience. The type has to be so small to fit all the words on the slide that no one can read it. Duarte [41]  keenly points out that if you have too many words, you no longer have a visual aid. You have either a paper or a teleprompter, and she recommends opting for a small number of words.

Once you understand that the words on the screen are competing for your audience’s attention, it will be easier to edit your slide text down to a minimum. The next time you are watching a presentation and the slide changes, notice how you aren’t really grasping what the speaker is saying, and you also aren’t really understanding what you are reading. Studies have proved this split-attention affects our ability to retain information; [42]  so when presenting, you need to give your audience silent reading time when you display a new slide. That is: talk, advance to your next slide, wait for them to read the slide, and resume talking. If you consider how much time your audience is reading rather than listening, hopefully you will decide to reduce the text on your slide and return the focus back to you, the speaker, and your message.

There are several ways to reduce the number of words on your page, but don’t do it haphazardly. As previously discussed, instead of simply abbreviating your message to make it “fit,” consider turning as many concepts as possible into images. Studies have shown that people retain more information when they see images that relate to the words they are hearing. [43]  And when people are presented information for a very short time, they remember images better than words. [44]

An easy way to judge how much time your audience needs to read your slide silently, is to read the slide text to yourself in reverse order.

Figure 13.10  by the Public Speaking Project.  CC-BY-NC-ND .

The ubiquitous use of bulleted lists is also hotly debated. PowerPoint is practically designed around the bulleted-list format, even though is it regularly blamed for dull, tedious presentations with either overly dense or overly superficial content. [45]  Mostly this format is used (incorrectly) as a presenter’s outline. “ No one can do a good presentation with slide after slide of bullet points. No One. ” [46]  Reserve bulleted lists for specifications or explaining the order of processes. In all other cases, look for ways to use images, a short phrase, or even no visual at all.

Quotes, on the other hand, are not as offensive to design when they are short, legible, and infrequently used. They can be a very powerful way to hammer a point home or to launch into your next topic. [47]  See Figure 13.10 for an example. If you do use a quote in your slide show, immediately stop and read it out loud or allow time for it to be read silently. If the quote is important enough for you to include it in the talk, the quote deserves the audience’s time to read and think about it. Alternately, use a photo of the speaker or of the subject with a phrase from the quote you will be reading them, making the slide enhance the point of the quote.

Images can be powerful and efficient ways to tap into your audience’s emotions. Use photographs to introduce an abstract idea, to evoke emotion, to present evidence, or to direct the audience attention, just make sure it is compatible with your message. [48]  Photos aren’t the only images available. You might consider using simplified images like silhouettes, line art, diagrams, enlargements, or exploded views, but these should be high quality and relevant. Simplified can be easier to understand, particularly if you are showing something that has a lot of detail. Simple images also translate better than words to a multicultural audience. [49] In all cases, choose only images that enhance your spoken words and are professional quality. This generally rules out the clip art that comes with slideware, whose use is a sign of amateurism. Select high-quality images and don’t be afraid to use your entire slide to display the image. Boldness with images often adds impact.

When using images, do not enlarge them to the point that the image becomes blurry, also known as  pixelation . Pixelation, (Figure 13.11) is caused when the resolution of your image is too low for your output device (e.g. printer, monitor, projector). When selecting images, look for clear ones that can be placed in your presentation without enlarging them. A common practice is to use images over 1,000 pixels wide for filling an entire slide. If your images begin to pixelate, either reduce the size of the image or select a different image.

Never use an image that has a  watermark  on it, as in Figure 13.2. A watermark is text or a logo that is placed in a digital image to prevent people from re-using it. It is common for companies that sell images to have a preview available that has a watermark on it. This allows you, the potential customer, to see the image, but prevents you from using the image until you have paid for it. Using a watermarked image in your presentation is unprofessional. Select another image without a watermark, take a similar photo yourself, or pay to get the watermark-free version.

You can create images yourself, use free images from places like Pexels, or pay for images from companies like iStockphoto for your presentations. Purchasing images can get expensive quickly and searching for free images is time consuming. Be sure to only use images that you have permission or rights to use and give proper credit for their use. If you are looking for free images, try searching the Creative Commons database  for images from places like Flickr, Google, and others. The creators of images with a  Creative Commons License  allow others to use their work, but with specific restrictions. What is and isn’t allowed is described in the license for each image. Generally, images can be used in educational or non-commercial settings at no cost as long as you give the photographer credit. Also, images created by the U.S. government and its agencies are copyright free and can be used at no cost.

One final consideration with using images: having the same image on every page, be it part of the slide background or your company logo, can be distracting and should be removed or minimized. As mentioned earlier, the more you can simplify your slide, the easier it will be for your audience to understand your message.

Graphs and Charts

As we mentioned in the chapter on support materials, if you have numerical data that you want to present, consider using a graph or chart. You are trying to make a specific point with the data on the slide, so make sure that the point—the conclusion you want your audience to draw — is clear. This may mean that you reduce the amount of data you present, even though it is tempting to include all of your data on your slide.

It is best to minimize the amount of information and focus instead on the simple and clear conclusion. [50]  You can include the complete data set in your handout if you feel it is necessary. [51]  Particularly when it comes to numerical data, identify the meaning in the numbers and exclude the rest. “Audiences are screaming ‘make it clear,’ not ‘cram more in.’ You won’t often hear an audience member say, ‘That presentation would have been so much better if it were longer.” [52]  In some cases you can even ditch the graph altogether and display the one relevant fact that is your conclusion.

Different charts have different purposes, and it is important to select the one that puts your data in the appropriate context to be clearly understood. [53]  Pie charts show how the parts relate to the whole and are suitable for up to eight segments, as long as they remain visually distinct. [54]  Start your first slice of the pie at 12:00 with your smallest portion and continue around the circle clockwise as the sections increase in size. Usea line graph to show trends over time or how data relates or interacts. Bar charts are good for showing comparisons of size or magnitude [55]  and for showing precise comparisons. [56]  There are other types of charts and graphs available, but these are the most common.

When designing charts, one should use easily distinguishable colors with clear labels. Be consistent with your colors and data groupings. [57]  For clarity, avoid using 3-D graphs and charts, and remove as much of the background noise (lines, shading, etc.) as possible. [58] All components of your graph, once the clutter is removed, should be distinct from any background color. Finally, don’t get too complex in any one graph, make sure your message is as clear as possible, and make sure to visually highlight the conclusion you want the audience to draw.

• Duarte, N. (2010).  Resonate: Present visual stories that transform audiences . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.  ↵
• Young, K. S., & Travis, H. P. (2008).  Oral communication: Skills, choices, and consequences  (2nd ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.  ↵
• Duarte, N. (2008).  Slide:ology: The art and science of creating great presentations.  Sebastopol, CA : O’Reilly Media.  ↵
• Tufte, E. R. (2003).  The cognitive style of PowerPoint . Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.  ↵
• Reynolds, G. (2008).  Presentation Zen: Simple ideas on presentation design and delivery.  Berkeley, CA: New Riders.  ↵
• Vasile, A. J. (2004).  Speak with confidence: A practical guide  (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.  ↵
• Duarte, N. (2008).  Slide:ology: The art and science of creating great presentations . Sebastopol, CA : O’Reilly Media.  ↵
• Lehtonen, M. (2011). Communicating competence through PechaKucha presentations.  Journal of Business Communication ,  48 (4), 464 – 481.  ↵
• Beyer, A. (2011). Improving student presentations: Pecha Kucha and just plain PowerPoint.  Teaching of Psychology ,  38 (2), 122 – 126.  ↵
• Panag, S. (2010). A Web 2.0 Toolkit for Educators.  Youth Media Reporter , 489 – 91.  ↵
• Yee, K., & Hargis, J. (2010). PREZI: A different way to present.  Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education (TOJDE) ,  11 (4), 9–11.  ↵
• Williams, R. (2004).  The nondesigner’s design book: Design and typographic principles for the visual novice  (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press.  ↵
• Kosslyn, S. M. (2007).  Clear and to the point: 8 psychological principles for compelling PowerPoint presentations.  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.  ↵
• Reynolds 2008  ↵
• Mayer, R. E. (2001).  Multimedia learning . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.  ↵
• Duarte, N. (2010).  Resonate: Present visual stories that transform audiences.  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.  ↵
• Reynolds 2008  ↵
• Duarte 2010  ↵
• Williams 2004   ↵
• Kadavy, D. (2011).  Design for hackers: Reverse-engineering beauty.  West Sussex, UK : John Wiley & Sons  ↵
• Williams 2004  ↵
• Malamed, C. (2009).  Visual language for designers: Principles for creating graphics that people understand.  Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers.  ↵
• Duarte 2008  ↵
• Kadavy 2011  ↵
• Duarte 2008; Kosslyn 2007  ↵
• Bajaj, G. (2007).  Cutting edge PowerPoint 2007 for dummies . Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing.  ↵
• Kosslyn 2007  ↵
• Kadavy 2011; Kosslyn 2007  ↵
• Weaver, M. (1999). Reach out through technology: Make your point with effective A/V.  Computers in Libraries ,  19 (4), 62.  ↵
• Mayer 2001  ↵
• Tufte 2003  ↵
• Malamad 2009  ↵
• Tufte 2003  ↵

LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS

• Chapter 13 Design Principles.  Authored by : Sheila Kasperek, MLIS, MSIT.  Provided by : Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA.  Located at :  http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html .  Project : The Public Speaking Project.  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Figures 13.1-13.14.  Authored by : Sheila Kasperek and Tom Oswald .  Located at :  http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html .  Project : The Public Speaking Project.  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative
• Chapter 13 Objectives, Outline, and Introduction.  Authored by : Sheila Kasperek, MLIS, MSIT.  Provided by : Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA.  Located at :  http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html .  Project : The Public Speaking Project.  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Grifo magico. Authored by : emijrp.  Located at :  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grifo_m%C3%A1gico.JPG .  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• mwdCyborgLenses.  Authored by : emden09.  Located at :  https://www.flickr.com/photos/emden09/16356102352/ .  License :  CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Chapter 13 Types of Visual Aids.  Authored by : Sheila Kasperek, MLIS, MSIT.  Provided by : Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA.  Located at :  http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html .  Project : The Public Speaking Project.  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Firefighters Onboard Royal Navy Destroyer HMS Edinburgh.  Provided by : UK Ministry of Defence.  Located at :  https://flic.kr/p/aijcYa .  License :  CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
• Honestly I Don’t Remember Much from This Lecture.  Authored by : Daniel Lu.  Located at :  https://flic.kr/p/58GKQt .  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• A dad teaches his daughter the hula hoop at the 2011 Downton Cuckoo Fair.  Authored by : Anguskirk.  Located at :  https://flic.kr/p/9DRxFa .  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Image of poster presentation.  Authored by : Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL).  Located at :  https://flic.kr/p/dt1umd .  License :  CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Steve Jobs Presentation 2.  Authored by : Ken.gz.  Located at :  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steve_Jobs_Presentation_2.jpg .  License :  CC BY: Attribution

PUBLIC DOMAIN CONTENT

• Image of distributing handouts.  Authored by : Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kerryl Cacho.  Provided by : U.S. Navy.  Located at :  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_070808-N-9421C-143_Lt._Lydia_Battey_distributes_handouts_explaining_the_symptoms_of_tuberculosis_to_local_residents_at_Bunabun_Health_Center_in_Madang,_Papua_New_Guinea.jpg .  License :  Public Domain: No Known Copyright

Principles of Public Speaking Copyright © 2022 by Katie Gruber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Watch: CT Senator Chris Murphy Begs for Gun Violence Legislation in Impassioned Speech

By angela fortuna • published may 24, 2022 • updated on may 24, 2022 at 11:27 pm.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy took to the Senate floor Tuesday to address politicians and beg for change after a mass shooting resulted in the death of over 19 kids and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas .

“I'm here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues,” Murphy said. “Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.”

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In an emotional appeal to fellow politicians, Murphy stressed the need to take action to prevent further tragedies from happening. When Murphy made the comments, the death toll stood at 14 children dead.

There are 14 kids dead in an elementary school in Texas right now. What are we doing? Why are we here? What are we doing? -Sen. Chris Murphy

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“It will not solve the problem of American violence by itself, but by doing something, we at least stop sending this quiet message of endorsement to these killers whose brains are breaking, who see the highest levels of government doing nothing shooting after shooting,” Murphy said.

Murphy said the issue isn't simply mental illness and that the U.S. doesn't have any more mental illness than any other country in the world.

‘They are going to get into your lives': Spotted lanternfly gains foothold in CT

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“You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we don't - we're not an outlier on mental illness. We're an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That's what makes America different," Murphy said.

Murphy asked senators why they were in a position of authority if not "to solve a problem as existential as this."

"This only happens in this country and nowhere else, nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day. Nowhere else do parents have to talk to their kids as I have had to do about why they got locked into a bathroom and told to be quiet for five minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America. And it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue," Murphy said.

• How to talk with kids about school shootings and other traumatic events
• Sandy Hook families and others in Conn. grieve following Georgia mass shooting
• At DNC, Sandy Hook shooting survivor joins more survivors of gun violence and families of those killed

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting Tuesday . Second, third and fourth graders were among those killed and injured when an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School.

"... Just days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down African American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands. What are we doing?" Murphy questioned.

" Our kids are living in fear every single time they set foot in the classroom because they think they're going to be next. " -Sen. Chris Murphy

Sandy Hook Promise released a statement about the shooting.

"We are devastated about reports that multiple people are dead, including children,"  the organization posted on Facebook Tuesday afternoon.  "Our hearts are with the families and community as this tragic story unfolds."

Sandy Hook Promise was created in the wake of the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Twenty first-graders and six educators were killed in Sandy Hook Elementary.

The nonprofit was founded and led by several family members of those who were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

This article tagged under:

puppy_instance = Puppy("Buddy", "Ball")

To create an instance of the class Puppy in Python, you would use the following syntax: puppy_instance = Puppy("Buddy", "Ball")

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Even if Chris Sale's fiery speech didn't cause Boston's epic Game 4 comeback, it certainly didn't hurt

LOS ANGELES – First J.D. Martinez walked by, and then Andrew Benintendi , and then Mookie Betts . They didn’t so much as blink at the crazy man screaming at the air. Compared to some of Chris Sale ’s other antics, his dugout eruption during Game 4 of the World Series rated as rather milquetoast. His brow furrowed. His arms gesticulated. His mouth loosed a barrage of F-bombs. Boston’s ace did land one particularly sick burn on Los Angeles Dodgers starter Rich Hill , who for six innings had limited the Red Sox to a single hit: “He throws two [expletive] pitches!”

This, like David Ortiz’s dugout speech to the Red Sox in Game 4 of the 2013 World Series and Jason Heyward ’s to the Chicago Cubs during the Game 7 rain delay in 2016 and Justin Verlander ’s to the Houston Astros in the midst of last year’s Game 2 , is bound to be elevated into the annals of oratory legend should the Red Sox win the World Series, which they’re one game from after a stunning 9-6 victory Saturday night at Dodger Stadium. The speeches share no syntactic effervescence or illuminative genius but rather abide by a rule that is worth remembering: When good baseball players get pissed off, sometimes other baseball players respond.

Now, a couple things. First, inside of any playoff dugout at any particular moment, the likelihood of someone yelling isn’t exactly minuscule. Second, most of those speeches don’t happen to be caught on camera and blasted out to the world by Fox nor do they often directly precede seminal moments of the game. To say the Red Sox scratched back from a 4-0 deficit, won Game 4 and took a 3-1 series lead because Sale told Red Sox hitters to stop being terrible during the sixth inning, then, would be to say causation and correlation are one and the same. The only thing we can say with a decent amount of certainty is that Sale’s rant petrified the youngest player on the Red Sox.

“It scared me a little bit,” third baseman Rafael Devers said.

Beyond that, it is perhaps fairest to characterize the pep talk as Red Sox manager Alex Cora did: “It was a moment.” And you know what? On a night after the Red Sox lost the longest game in playoff history – an 18-inning, 7-hour, 20-minute battery drainer , the kind of defeat that can leech itself to a lesser team and suck dry its will – sometimes a team needs a moment to remind it what’s at stake.

Whether Sale managed to do that is neither clear nor particularly measurable. For some perspective, Martinez, the slugger who was part of an incredible 0-for-42 stretch by the Red Sox’s Nos. 1-4 hitters dating back to Game 2, meandered directly past Sale mid-tirade. “I walked by,” Martinez said. “I didn’t hear it.” Martinez asked what, exactly, Sale had said and was told the part about Hill’s arsenal. He smiled. “I think I heard that,” he said.

Martinez didn’t think it was all that big of a deal because he is a hitter, and hitters understand that Hill’s two pitches – a fastball he elevates with aplomb and a curveball that’s baseball’s version of a great crossover, buckling knees with regularity – are not some puzzle solved with try-hard. At the same time, when someone with a Hall of Fame pedigree like Sale finds a situation imperative enough to do his best imitation of that guy at the bus stop – you know the guy – it tends to resonate.

And when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled Hill from the game with one on and one out in the seventh inning, suddenly the two-[expletive]-pitch guy was replaced with a one-[expletive]-walk guy (Scott Alexander), who gave way to a three-run-[expletive]-homer guy (Ryan Madson). That Roberts yanking Hill somehow rose to the level of presidential importance showed that Sale wasn’t the only person with hot takes on Game 4. It also gave way to Mitch Moreland defiling the trash changeup Madson left over the heart of the plate.

Just like that, it was 4-3, and the Dodgers were bowing. Closer Kenley Jansen entered to lock down the eighth inning and proceeded to give up a game-tying home run to the second batter he faced, Steve Pearce. It took one fewer batters for Jansen to blow this lead than it did the one in the eighth inning of Game 3, which devolved into the madness that shelved Dodgers relievers Pedro Báez and Julio Urías for Game 4.

And that gave the Boston its dream ninth. The Red Sox love to talk about their resiliency, and in some regards it’s true. They shook off a Game 2 Division Series loss to the New York Yankees. And a Game 1 ALCS loss to the Astros. And … before Game 3 against the Dodgers, those were the only two times they’d lost in all of October. Between that and the 108-win regular season, it’s not exactly like the Red Sox have traveled a road laden with adverse conditions. They have a huge payroll, incredible talent and a superb manager. The Marlins they ain’t.

This, though? This was feisty and spirited. This was the Red Sox staring at a potential tied series when they had been one swing in Game 3 away from courting a sweep. This was 4-0 to 4-3, then to 4-4, then to 9-4. This was Brock Holt poking a one-out double just inside the left-field line and Devers pinch hitting to drive in the go-ahead run with a single up the gut and Pearce later clearing the bases with a three-run double and Xander Bogaerts accounting for that final run with an RBI single. This was … facts.

BC (Before Chris): 1 for 19, one hit-by-pitch, two walks, six strikeouts.

AD (After Diatribe): 7 for 16, two home runs, two doubles, four walks, two strikeouts.

“Chris Sale is a leader,” Red Sox hitting coach Tim Hyers said. “And he did it the way Chris Sale knows how to get the team moving. We have to give him a lot of credit. It was perfect timing.”

He’s right. It was perfect timing, because it looks causative. And then you remember: Sale talking about how hittable Rich Hill should be didn’t cause Moreland to study how Madson pitched Jackie Bradley Jr. while standing on deck. After abandoning his changeup in earlier appearances in the series, Madson had started throwing it again and flipped a few to Bradley. Moreland came to the plate guessing first-pitch changeup, and when it arrived, he parked it well into the right-field stands. The 54,400 at Dodger Stadium who had made the place shake when Yasiel Puig walloped a three-run homer in the sixth to give Los Angeles its lead went almost silent.

The little moments like Moreland’s dissection of Madson – the studying hitters use to mitigate pitchers’ advantage – were abundant in the Red Sox’s comeback. It’s one of the chief reasons they can clinch a championship with David Price on the mound in Game 5 – or, perhaps, Sale, who’s going to be available out of the bullpen Sunday while also slated to start a potential Game 6.

Starting pitchers rarely speak out like Sale did because their play can do the talking only every fifth day. Even if the majority of hitters didn’t snap to at the sound of Sale’s harangue, they recognized its significance – that on a team with star hitters, he’s the only pitcher with the gravitas to do what he did and not suffer backlash on account of it. And after Game 3, with the brilliant and ill-fated performance of Nathan Eovaldi fresh on the Red Sox’s mind, Sale refused to let it go for naught.

Instead, the speech. It followed Cora’s postgame speech and a breakfast in which the Red Sox players and families hung together and a lax pregame routine. Anything to normalize this time of year, which is inherently abnormal, where starters are relievers and half the guys platoon players and Chris Sale is mad as hell and is not going to take this anymore.

Perhaps when he addresses the speech, Sale can speak to its contents. It looked as though there was a let’s-go element to it or maybe one where he wants to get Red Sox pitchers some runs. And some four-letter F-words. A lot of four-letter F-words.

Which are fine. See. That’s a four-letter F-word. So is foul, which Chris Sale was Saturday. And five. The Red Sox will play in Game 5 on Sunday. And they don’t want to fail, not in the Fall Classic, not with a feat like four championships in 15 years at their fingertips. They want to make one thing, and one thing only, a fact: That they are the kind of World Series champions who may not need a speech to win it but certainly don’t mind one, either.

More from Yahoo Sports: • Four Jags players detained after altercation at London nightclub • Viral FSU fan explains what he was doing during Clemson game • LeBron shows support for Senate hopeful with wardrobe choice • Watch ASU’s N’Keal Harry make crazy OBJ-esque catch

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January 16, 2024

Almost as Good as It Gets…But Will It Last?

Governor Christopher J. Waller

At The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

Thank you, David Wessel, and thank you to Brookings for the opportunity to speak to you today.

In the second half of 2023, I gave a series of speeches about the apparent conflict between the strength of economic activity in the third quarter and continued progress toward the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) 2 percent inflation goal. 1 I said then that "something's got to give"—either activity needs to moderate, or progress on lowering inflation is going to stop. By late November, the latest economic data left me encouraged that there were signs of moderating economic activity in the fourth quarter, but inflation was still too high.

As of today, the data has come in even better. Real gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to have grown between 1 and 2 percent in the fourth quarter, unemployment is still below 4 percent, and core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) inflation has been running close to 2 percent for the last 6 months. For a macroeconomist, this is almost as good as it gets.

But will it last? Time will tell whether inflation can be sustained on its recent path and allow us to conclude that we have achieved the FOMC's price-stability goal. Time will tell if this can happen while the labor market still performs above expectations. The data we have received the last few months is allowing the Committee to consider cutting the policy rate in 2024. However, concerns about the sustainability of these data trends requires changes in the path of policy to be carefully calibrated and not rushed. In the end, I am feeling more confident that the economy can continue along its current trajectory.

Let me start with the data on economic activity that has brought me to this view, and then I'll talk about the labor market, financial conditions, and inflation. I'll conclude with what I think the implications are from all that for monetary policy.

First, economic activity has moderated. After averaging an annualized 3 percent over the first three quarters of 2023, and 5 percent in the third quarter, growth in real GDP appears to have slowed appreciably in the fourth quarter. The average of private-sector forecasts summarized by the Blue Chip survey estimates that real GDP grew 1.5 percent in the final three months of 2023. The Atlanta Fed's GDP Now model, based on data in hand, currently stands at 2.2 percent. An important part of that moderation comes from business investment and government spending, both of which showed rapid growth earlier in 2023 that didn't appear sustainable. Consumer spending also accounted for much of the surprising strength in GDP growth earlier in the year, but here the slowdown so far appears more tentative. Factors such as high interest rates, a depletion of excess savings, and a pickup in credit card usage all portend slower growth ahead, but it is unclear how much of that slowing has already occurred. Since consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of GDP, this component of demand is obviously critical for the outlook. We'll find out more about consumer spending tomorrow from the report on December's retail sales.

Turning to the labor market, over the course of 2023, there have been increases in labor supply amid slowing demand for labor, and I expect this to continue to bring the labor market into better balance. Some have seen the latest jobs report as in conflict with this story, so let me explain why I don't see it that way. The short version is that I see the surprises in the December jobs report as largely noise against a trend of ongoing moderation that supports progress toward 2 percent inflation.

The unemployment rate in December held steady at 3.7 percent while employers added 216,000 jobs, which was more than expected and an increase from the 173,000 created in November and 105,000 in October. While that looks like a modest acceleration in job creation, I remind myself that revisions to monthly payrolls have been downward for most of 2023—from the first to the third estimate employment gains were revised down in 9 of 10 job reports. Given this recent history of revisions, there is a good chance December will be revised down. Furthermore, with growth expectations moderating over coming quarters, employment gains are likely to slow. We can see that this is already happening if we look at progress over the previous quarters. Average monthly payroll gains over the fourth quarter were 165,000, a step down from the 221,000 average in the third quarter and 257,000 in the first half of 2023. This data shows an improving balance between labor supply and demand.

Likewise, an uptick in wage growth last month should be viewed over a longer time horizon. Average hourly earnings rose 0.4 percent in December, as they did in November, and the 3- and 12-month increases ticked up. But over the course of the fourth quarter, wages rose less than they did in the third quarter, and over the past several quarters I see a moderation in wage increases across various measures of labor compensation that I expect will be consistent with ongoing progress toward 2 percent inflation. And, though there was a drop in labor force participation in December, the fourth-quarter average is higher than it was in 2022. These are all signs that the labor market continues to come into better balance.

Meanwhile, data on job openings indicates ongoing moderation in labor demand. Job openings played a prominent role in my thinking over the last two years about how restrictive monetary policy aimed at bringing down inflation will impact labor demand and unemployment. One can think of total labor demand as being the sum of the number of workers employed and the number of workers that firms want to hire. The latter is best measured by posted job vacancies. If labor demand declines, the question is: Will employment bear the brunt of the reduction in demand or will vacancies absorb the impact? Traditional Phillips curve analysis assumes that employment would bear the brunt and as a result, unemployment would rise significantly from a tightening of monetary policy. History has shown that this is not an unreasonable assumption, particularly when the job vacancy rate is below 4.5 percent.

But in the spring of 2022, the vacancy rate peaked around 7.5 percent with nearly 12 million job vacancies, and there were still about 6 million unemployed workers. It just seemed counterintuitive to me that with that many job openings and so few people looking for work that the first thing a firm would do when labor demand softened would be to lay off workers. My economic instinct was that this time things would be different and that vacancies would absorb the decline in labor demand, while employment and unemployment changed relatively little.

But instinct isn't enough sometimes. One needs an economic model to verify your instinct and good data analysis is needed to quantify the theoretical impact. This is what I provided in a speech I gave in May 2022, with the help of Andrew Figura. 2 In that speech we described a textbook labor search model to derive a Beveridge curve, which is a theoretical relationship between job vacancies and the unemployment rate. 3 To quantify the effects of restrictive monetary policy on unemployment, we used standard empirical methods to calibrate the theoretical model. We showed that if restrictive monetary policy could lower the vacancy rate from 7.5 percent to 4.5 percent via a significant decline in job vacancies, there would be a relatively small increase in the unemployment rate—from 3.7 percent to 4.2 percent. Based on this analysis, we argued that, as long as the involuntary job-separation rate did not rise, restrictive monetary policy would allow the FOMC to bring inflation down without a significant increase in the unemployment rate. This seemed like a very plausible assumption given the incredibly high vacancy rate and dearth of workers looking for jobs. Our predictions contradicted standard Phillips curve analysis and historical precedent, but we were in unprecedented times in 2022.

It has been nearly two years since I gave that speech. How has our prediction faired? Data received since then have supported our argument. Since March 2022, the FOMC raised the policy rate over 500 basis points and core PCE inflation has fallen substantially, especially when measured over the past six months. During this dramatic tightening of policy, the job vacancy rate fell from around 7.5 percent to 5.3 percent, which brought the ratio of job vacancies to the number of unemployed people to a touch below 1.4—down from the peak of 2 and not far from the pre-pandemic level of 1.2. The involuntary job-separation rate has remained essentially unchanged at 1 percent since April 2022. Meanwhile the unemployment rate, while bouncing around a bit, is the same as it was in March 2022, 3.7 percent, which is lower than we predicted.

Now, we argued that this couldn't go on forever. We showed in our research that if the vacancy rate continued to fall below 4.5 percent there would be a significant increase in the unemployment rate. So, from now on, the setting of policy needs to proceed with more caution to avoid over-tightening. But to me, this episode shows that good theory combined with good data analysis can lead to good policy outcomes, even if the predictions challenge conventional wisdom.

Moving on from the labor market, another important factor affecting economic activity and progress toward the FOMC's economic objectives is financial conditions, and I wanted to give my view of where they stand. There has been a lot of focus on tightening financial conditions in the fall and then easing of conditions more recently. My view continues to be that, on net, financial conditions remain restrictive and continue to have the desired effect of being a drag on economic activity to put downward pressure on inflation.

Recall that the 10-year Treasury yield peaked in mid-October around 5 percent at the time of the jump up in measured economic activity in the third quarter and shortly after a strong jobs report for September. At that point, FOMC participants still expected another rate hike in 2023. But then the data started cooling off, the FOMC's December Summary of Economic Projections indicated no more hikes, and the 10-year Treasury yield fell to around 4 percent, which is roughly where it was just after the FOMC's last rate hike in July. Remember that in July the widespread view was that financial conditions were pretty tight. I consider this to still be true today, and that judgment is supported by current readings of financial conditions indexes, which capture a broader set of financial variables. 4

So let's talk about what the data on economic activity, the labor market and financial conditions mean for progress toward 2 percent inflation. The backdrop is that we made a lot of progress on inflation in 2023. The 12-month percent change in total PCE inflation, the FOMC's preferred measure for our target, fell from 5.3 percent in January to 2.6 percent in November, the latest month of data. Factoring out volatile energy and food prices, core inflation is a better guide to where inflation is going, and core PCE inflation fell from 5 percent in January to 3.2 percent in November. With inflation declining over the course of the year, I like to look at 3- and 6-month measures to have a better understanding of the current level of inflation. As I noted earlier, the 6-month change in core inflation has been hovering close to a 2 percent annual rate, as has the 3-month measure.

Data on inflation for December was released last week for the consumer price index (CPI) and producer price index. CPI inflation for both total and core rose 0.3 percent for the month. Producer price index (PPI) inflation numbers reported a continued decline in those prices. Some of the PPI data feed into December PCE inflation, and private sector forecasts suggest that the monthly core PCE reading will be 0.2 percent. If those forecasts hold true, then core PCE inflation in December will remain close to 2 percent, when measured on a 3-month or 6-month basis.

PCE inflation of 2 percent is our goal, but that goal cannot be achieved for just a moment in time. It must be sustained at a level of 2 percent. As I said earlier, based on economic activity and the cooling of the labor market, I am becoming more confident that we are within striking distance of achieving a sustainable level of 2 percent PCE inflation. I think we are close, but I will need more information in the coming months confirming or (conceivably) challenging the notion that inflation is moving down sustainably toward our inflation goal.

This brings me to the implications for monetary policy. The progress I have noted on inflation, combined with the data in hand on economic and financial conditions and my outlook has made me more confident than I have been since 2021 that inflation is on a path to 2 percent. While the emphasis of policy since that time has been on pushing down inflation, given the strength of the current labor market the FOMC's focus now is likely to be more balanced: keeping inflation on a 2 percent path while also keeping employment near its maximum level. Today, I view the risks to our employment and inflation mandates as being more closely balanced. I will be watching for sustained progress on inflation and modest cooling in the labor market that does not harm the economy.

I believe policy is set properly. It is restrictive and should continue to put downward pressure on demand to allow us to continue to see moderate inflation readings. So, as I said, I believe we are on the right track to achieve 2 percent inflation.

As long as inflation doesn't rebound and stay elevated, I believe the FOMC will be able to lower the target range for the federal funds rate this year. This view is consistent with the FOMC's economic projections in December, in which the median projection was three 25-basis-point cuts in 2024. Clearly, the timing of cuts and the actual number of cuts in 2024 will depend on the incoming data. Risks that would delay or dampen my expectation for cuts this year are that economic activity that seems to have moderated in the fourth quarter of 2023 does not play out; that the balance of supply and demand in the labor market, which improved over 2023, stops improving or reverses; and that the gains on moderating inflation evaporate.

One piece of data I will be watching closely is the scheduled revisions to CPI inflation due next month. Recall that a year ago, when it looked like inflation was coming down quickly, the annual update to the seasonal factors erased those gains. In mid-February, we will get the January CPI report and revisions for 2023, potentially changing the picture on inflation. My hope is that the revisions confirm the progress we have seen, but good policy is based on data and not hope.

When the time is right to begin lowering rates, I believe it can and should be lowered methodically and carefully. In many previous cycles, which began after shocks to the economy either threatened or caused a recession, the FOMC cut rates reactively and did so quickly and often by large amounts. This cycle, however, with economic activity and labor markets in good shape and inflation coming down gradually to 2 percent, I see no reason to move as quickly or cut as rapidly as in the past. The healthy state of the economy provides the flexibility to lower the (nominal) policy rate to keep the real policy rate at an appropriate level of tightness. But I will end by repeating that the timing and number of rate cuts will be driven by the incoming data.

1. See Christopher J. Waller (2023), "Something's Got to Give," speech delivered at the Distinguished Speaker Seminar, European Economics and Financial Center, London, October 18, and "Something Appears to Be Giving," speech delivered at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., November 28. The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee. Return to text

2. See Christopher J. Waller (2022), "Responding to High Inflation, with Some Thoughts on a Soft Landing," speech delivered at the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS) Distinguished Lecture, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, May 30. Return to text

3. See Figura and Waller (2022). "What does the Beveridge curve tell us about the likelihood of a soft landing?," FEDS Notes. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, July 29, 2022. Return to text

4. For example, the movement of Goldman Sachs' Financial Conditions Index looks a lot like that of the 10-year Treasury yield and is close to its levels in July. The Federal Reserve's Financial Conditions Impulse on Growth index also shows a downward movement from its peak earlier in 2023, and its level continues to suggest that conditions are a headwind to economic activity. Return to text

Chris gave a speech to his colleagues on the last quarter's sales numbers. He prepared a pamphlet of information that visually represented the trends he discussed in his speech and had the audience pass it around as he was speaking. However, this approach created a distraction that reduced the effectiveness of his speech. What three options would have been a better approach? pass around copies of the visual aid before the speech display the information using a projection screen or large poster hand the information out to everyone after the speech is over avoid using a visual aid that is going to distract

Explanation