Handouts

Handouts are often advisable due to the complexity of many scientific topics or the time allotted for the talk. They can reinforce important information, provide summaries and reading lists, and supply supporting data such as math, detailed relational or organizational information, etc., that would be difficult or unnecessary to present within your talk.

You can distribute handouts before, during or after your talk. There are advantages and disadvantages to all three so you must consider what you hope to accomplish with the information provided to determine when to give it out.

If there is material in your talk that does not lend itself to visual display on the screen but that is important to follow while you speak, distribute the handouts before you begin speaking. If possible, have them in place when the audience enters the room. This will allow them to read the information before you begin speaking. People who are reading are not fully listening, so if your printed materials cannot be distributed until you take the podium, wait a couple of minutes while the audience looks over the information before you start to talk.

Distributing handouts during your presentation is tricky. Pass them out quickly and make certain they are relevant to the point you are discussing. No matter how quickly the distribution is accomplished, the audience will be distracted and you will lose some of your momentum. This is the least favorable time to distribute materials, but occasionally it is the only appropriate time to do so. Just be aware that you will have to recapture your audience's attention and get yourself back on track.

If you decide to distribute the printed materials after your talk, let your audience know during your presentation. Tell them what information is covered in the handouts, which will encourage them to listen instead of dividing their attention by taking unnecessary notes.

Visual Aids
Many public speaking experts contend that visual aids ruin more speeches than they improve. In the introduction, we noted that human beings retain best what they see and hear simultaneously, so how is it that visual aids often fail to improve a talk?

The answer lies in the fact that there is a right way and a wrong way to prepare and present visual materials. Visual aids are vehicles for enhancing or facilitating the understanding of your spoken words. If they do not fulfill that purpose, they are misused. Visual material if properly used will give clear visual insights that would require many words or columns of numbers.

The more prevalent the use of visual aids has become, the more they are overused and misused. Improper use seems, unfortunately, to have become almost the accepted standard. Complex scientific topics often are improved by or require visual aids, but some speakers appear to mistakenly believe it is impossible to give a scientific talk without them - lots and lots of them jampacked with barely legible data, graphs, figures, mathematics, acronyms and fragmented verbiage - which is not the way to use the vehicle. Some speakers even prepare a visual piece for the title of their presentation!

A visual aid becomes the focal point for the time it is in view. An audience's attention is quite naturally drawn from the speaker to anything that is put on a screen, blackboard or flipchart. Since they automatically assume center stage, it is vitally important that all visual aids clarify and support your talk in an attractive, comprehensible manner or they will detract from it and compete with it. Another thing to keep in mind is that, for many, a darkened room is an invitation to doze. It is much easier to lose your audience when the lights are low, so be sure your visual material is compelling.

In all but impromptu talks, poorly designed, haphazardly rendered and badly edited visual aids suggest a lack of professionalism, preparation and commitment to the audience. Poor visuals are rude and degrade the communication.

If you make your own 35mm slides by photographing printed matter, you should be careful in using a camera with automatic exposure. Most such cameras assume the picture has light and dark elements, such that the overall scene is, on average, about 18% reflective. But printed matter, such as a drawing from a computer, is much brighter than this. The automatic exposure camera will underexpose it, thus giving a dark picture where the white parts of the picture are gray. The solution is to purposely overexpose by about two f-stops, or to use an " 18% gray card" (available from camera shops) in place of the actual scene to let the camera determine how bright the lighting is, and then replace the gray card with the computer output, or whatever you are trying to photograph.

Computer-based visual presentation technology is here and is expanding rapidly, offering more and improved options almost weekly Computer-generated graphics that produce dramatic on-screen projection of computer images, animation and simulations will very shortly be the accepted standards for most visual presentations. These technological advances provide exciting ways to present visual material, but with them comes the temptation to overdramatize a presentation. The "rules" on when and how to best use visual material will still apply when everyone is using computer-based graphics. You want your audience to absorb and retain the substance of your talk rather than be mesmerized by your whiz-bang special effects. The more dazzling your electronic visuals are, the less important or memorable you, the speaker, are in the presentation.

It is reasonable to assume that scientists will be in the vanguard of implementing and furthering the use of electronic presentation technology. While slides (35mm slides) and transparencies (overheads) may be heading toward obsolescence, we discuss them here for two reasons: (1) in a world of tight budgets, it may be a while yet before electronic presentations are universal, and (2) the guidelines for low-tech visual aids also apply to the design and use of their high-tech cousins.

The Ten Commandments of Visual Aids

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein

I. Each visual aid shown must enhance, support, exemplify and/or facilitate understanding of material covered in your talk.

For each visual piece, ask three questions. If the answer is not a definite yes to all three, redo or discard the piece.

• Will it add to my presentation?
• Does it relate to material covered in my talk?
• Is the graphic quality acceptable?
It is not necessary to produce a visual aid for every point in your talk. On the other hand, it may be difficult to discuss some points without them, as with figures or graphs that are key elements of your talk. Despite the common practice of presenting a visual piece for every point of a talk, a scientific speaker should not feel compelled to present visual material unless it adds significantly to the spoken words.

Many speakers include visual aids that have little or no apparent bearing on their talks. There may be some relevance but by failing to explain the connection, the speaker leaves the audience confused or expects them to figure it out on their own. Visual material is not meant to stand alone without indicating its relevance when presented in the context of a talk.

II. All information presented visually should be brief and concise. It should be presented in the most comprehensible format and edited to the minimum number of words possible.

Editing visual materials to achieve the most illustrative, effective presentation requires walking a fine line between too much and too little. Do not use complete sentences but also avoid editing the material to lists of meaningless verbal scraps. Make certain to provide all necessary references, such as labeling axes and data points. A title for each visual piece gives the audience a clear idea of what they are seeing and what you will explain to them.

Use the graphic tool that makes the information the most easily understood. Consider the following recommendations:

• Word charts (lists) of no more than 36 words per visual piece (maximum of six lines with six words each).
• Pie charts for percentages.
• Bar graphs (horizontal) or column charts (vertical) for comparisons and rankings.
• Column or line charts for changes over time and frequency.
• Bar graphs and dot charts for correlation.

III. Visual aids must be legible and clearly visible to the entire audience.

An audience gnashes its collective teeth when it hears a speaker utter the words, "I know you can't see (read) this, but it doesn't really matter. I'll show it anyway and explain." The words that follow are generally a complete waste of the audience's time. Although the speaker acknowledges that the audience cannot make out the visual material, it is explained and discussed as though it were perfectly visible and legible. If a visual aid isn't visible and legible, it isn't an aid!

Every member of the audience must have an unobstructed view of the visual material if it is to be effective. Use of the upper half to three quarters of the screen permits people seated at the rear of the room to see easily without sighting around heads in front of them. Using the upper portion of the screen for transparencies is even more important because the projector, projector stand and your body, will obstruct part of the lower screen.

Use readable lettering. The rule of thumb with slides is that you should be able to easily read the words when holding the slide up to the light. The recommended font size for both slides and transparencies is 24 points.

Slides generally make better visual aids than transparencies in auditorium-sized rooms. Computer technology has greatly reduced the costs and simplified the job of producing them. Slides, however, must be of the greatest possible clarity and brightness to stand up well in large rooms. Magnification and distance dim the projected image and cause it to lose clarity. The further the projector is from the screen, the greater the order of magnification, thus the greater the loss of clarity and brightness of slides. The larger the room,the greater the need for bright, clear slides. Computer-generated graphics generally hold their quality very well with magnification and can exhibit much greater brilliance.

If you must use handwritten transparencies, use block letters, not script (cursive). And, please, use your very best penmanship. If your handwriting is difficult to read, it will not be any more legible magnified many times. Again, anything with which the audience must struggle is distracting and annoying, so you might consider having someone else write them for you, or have them typed.

In today's high-tech world, flipcharts and black (white) boards are used most frequently in the classroom, but occasionally they are all that is available for small groups or impromptu talks. The following chart provides a quick reference for the lettering size to use for distances from the board or chart to the last row of the audience:

• 1-inch (2.5 cm) letters for 30 feet (9 meters) or less,
• 2-inch (5 cm) letters for 30-50 feet (9-15 meters), and
• 3-inch (7.5 cm) letters for over 50 feet (15 meters).

Experts also offer these formatting tips to increase the legibility of your visual aids:

• Left justify the copy leaving the right margins ragged. Fully justified (equal right and left margins) text makes it more difficult to distinguish each line and to differentiate between points.
• Use a uniform, bold typeface.
• Sans-serif and computer-generated bold, serif typefaces enlarge well, whereas serif typewriter copy (generally "Courier" in the U.S.) does not.
• A combination of upper and lower case is more easily read from a distance than all upper case.
• Use larger type for headings and smaller type for subheads to show relative importance.
All you can hope to inspire in your audience with illegible, confusing visuals is annoyance, skepticism and questions about your competence and professionalism.

IV. Two or three facts or information points per image are best; six are considered the absolute maximum.

The more complex the points, the fewer that should appear on a single visual piece.

At times it may be necessary to use a complicated image. Instead of presenting the audience with a complex visual all at once, build it up, layer by layer. To keep the audience with you, add information incrementally by using a succession of slides or overlays (successive layers of transparencies). Creative use of color as information is added assists audience comprehension as you build to the final image.

V. Do not load too much visual material into a talk.


Depending on the complexity of the material, use of three to six images per 10 minutes is usually optimum. More complex information takes more time to absorb, so reduce the number of visual pieces presented accordingly.

VI.Use color for emphasis, distinction and clarity.

Use of color in visual aids dramatically improves retention of information. Highlighting headings and key points, graphs and charts is good, functional use of color. Using color for aesthetic value is acceptable unless it interferes with or detracts from absorption of the visually presented information, as happens when visual aids become too colorful or colors are too randomly placed. Use color for effective visual impact, but resist the temptation to over-colorize.

Be careful with colored backgrounds because some colors can make black figures or text less distinct. Yellow and bright blue are good background colors; dark blue and red usually are not, unless the figure or text is reversed to white.

In using color, it is very important to remember that magnification reduces brightness and clarity. Colors grow muddier the more a visual piece is magnified. Since slides and transparencies are all magnified to some degree, use the most vibrant colors possible. One of the best ways to brighten a color is to place it next to or surround it by its complementary color.

• Blue with orange,
• Blue-violet with yellow-orange, and
• Violet with yellow

Approximately 1 0 % of the male population is color blind and red-green is the most common type of color blindness. Please notice that the above list omits the red with green combinations of the color wheel. If possible, avoid those complementary color sets in your visual material to accommodate as many in your audience as possible.

VII. Do not read your visual aids to the audience instead of giving a talk.

First, the audience can read faster than they can hear you read. Second, if you are reading the screen, your back will be to the audience and part of a speaker's job is to face the audience. Third, if your visual aids contain most or all of your talk, you should probably have prepared a handout and relinquished your time at the lectern.

The desired style in scientific talks is to speak conversationally and confidently. It is perfectly fine to use your visual aids as notes for your talk, but reading a talk, whether from sheets of paper at the lectern or from images on a screen, is not the preferred presentation style in scientific circles.

VIII. Be aware of the "life span" of each visual piece.

The moment a visual piece is presented, the audience's attention is drawn to it. Display a piece of visual material only when you are ready to talk about it and do not leave an image to "die" on the screen.

The two factors that determine the life span of a visual aid are the time necessary for the speaker to discuss it and the time needed by the audience to absorb the information. More complex concepts and mathematics take longer for both parties, so be sure to allow extra time for them. It is frustrating to an audience to get only a brief glimpse of a visual piece before the next image is flashed on the screen. On the other hand, the audience's attention drifts if an image is left on the screen and the talk has moved on to new information. Remove each visual piece when your talk has progressed past that material; as long as an image is before them, at least part of the audience's attention will be on the screen.

If you present a new image for your next point while you are still speaking about the previous point, the audience will move ahead of you to the new material. Covering part of the information on a transparency until you reach that point in your talk is extremely annoying to an audience. If you need more than a minute between portions of a single transparency, break the information into separate transparencies to keep the audience with you and focused on what you are saying. Another solution is to prepare tranparency overlays, successive layers of transparencies that, when laid on top of one another, add information to a list or graph.

You should not leave the overhead projector empty between transparencies because this produces a blinding white light on the screen. Newer slide projectors make the screen go dark when there is no figure being shown, but older slide projectors produce the same blinding white light as do empty overhead projectors. Turning a machine on and off is distracting for the speaker and the audience. To avoid the distraction of the glaring white light, insert black or opaque slides or transparencies in the carousel or transparency stacks for the times in your talk when you have no visual material.

IX. Rehearse your talk with your visual aids.

The smooth, effective use of visual materials requires practice and a bit of choreography Bumpy verbal transitions and awkward handling of slides and transparencies will grab part of the audience's attention, thus lessening the impact of your talk. Rehearsing with your visual material will help keep you from getting sidetracked and losing your place in your talk.

Unless you are going for high drama, do not open or close your talk with a visual aid. After taking the podium, establish yourself with the audience and settle yourself down, then dim the lights and show your first visual piece. Practice talking while changing visual materials to avoid losing momentum, your own train of thought and the audience's attention. Make certain that the correct visual piece is on the screen after each change before you continue.

Perhaps the most difficult steps to remember in using transparencies are to 1) move aside after the image is projected so the audience can see the entire screen, 2) point to the information on the screen (not to the transparency on the projector!), then 3) turn back to the audience to speak.

It is important to explicitly point to the information on the screen that you are discussing. Do not assume the audience will find it on their own. Point to it and tell why it is important. Rehearsing will enable you to maintain your train of thought as you turn from the audience to the screen and back again.

Although transparencies often seem bent on rearranging themselves and not cooperating, they can be tamed. Several experts offer the following technique as a virtually foolproof means to prevent reshowing, omitting, and showing upside-down transparencies, assuming they are in the proper order to start with.

• 1. Position the Feed Stack on one end of the projector and the Shown Stack on the other.
• 2. Use both hands; position the new sheet with one hand and remove the shown one with the other hand in a fluid movement.
• 3. Raise the two stacks of transparencies to the same height as the projector so you don't bob up and down as you make the changes.
• 4. Step aside after the new image is on the screen.
For this method to work, you obviously need space around the projector for the two stacks. Since most overhead projector stands don't allow space on both sides of the projector, it's advisable to request a small table. A 4- or 6-foot table works well, with the long sides placed perpendicular to the screen. Placing the long side of the table perpendicular to the screen reduces the portion of the screen that is obscured from the audience. It is extremely difficult to manage transparencies in a talk if the projector is placed on a cart with no additional surface space, so it is entirely reasonable to request a table when you request the transparency projector.

There are eight different ways to position a transparency on the projector or a slide in a carousel slot and only one is right. When preparing your visuals, order your figures, making certain they are all oriented properly, then number them in the lower left corner. 'Thumb marks" in this location enable you or the projectionist to see the number when holding the piece in the right hand. Framing transparencies makes them much easier to handle and provides a place for numbers and notes. If possible, load your own slide carousel, preview it while you rehearse your talk and take it with you. If you load the carousel after you arrive at the talk site, numbering the slides beforehand will help get the order and orientation right, but do check them again as you insert them.

X. Prepare visual aids that can be accommodated by the technology on hand and the speaking environment.

You, as the speaker, have the ultimate responsibility for learning what audiovisual equipment will be available and/or to request the equipment you will need. Ordinarily, after you accept an invitation to speak, you can expect to be informed of the pertinent details, but if they are not forthcoming, ask questions:

• What equipment will be available? Will you need to specially request or order anything? (if showing a videotape, make sure the tape size and the equipment are compatible.)
• How many screens and how large?
• What is the size of the room and how will it be arranged?
• Where will the lectern be placed?
• Does the lectern have a light? It's difficult to read your notes without a lectern light in a room darkened for visual presentations.
• How many and what type of microphones?
• Will an audiovisual technician be on hand during your presentation? If not, who will handle emergencies? Are there extra projector bulbs on hand and where are they?
• Will a technician operate the slide projector or will there be a remote control for the speaker to use?
• Who will monitor and adjust the lights?
• What type of pointer will be provided?


All these factors together determine how you prepare and present your visual aids. Failure to learn those details in advance can lead to unpleasant surprises, if not outright disasters. Never assume that all the equipment you plan to use will be waiting for you unless you have discussed it (and even better, verified it in writing) with the organizers of the meeting, the person responsible for your invitation or the venue's audiovisual staff. Even if your requirements have been confirmed in writing, it is up to you to check that everything is actually there when you arrive at the site.

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