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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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• How to prepare and...

How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation

• Related content
• Peer review
• Lucia Hartigan , registrar 1 ,
• Fionnuala Mone , fellow in maternal fetal medicine 1 ,
• Mary Higgins , consultant obstetrician 2
• 1 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
• 2 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin; Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medicine and Medical Sciences, University College Dublin
• luciahartigan{at}hotmail.com

The success of an oral presentation lies in the speaker’s ability to transmit information to the audience. Lucia Hartigan and colleagues describe what they have learnt about delivering an effective scientific oral presentation from their own experiences, and their mistakes

The objective of an oral presentation is to portray large amounts of often complex information in a clear, bite sized fashion. Although some of the success lies in the content, the rest lies in the speaker’s skills in transmitting the information to the audience. 1

Preparation

It is important to be as well prepared as possible. Look at the venue in person, and find out the time allowed for your presentation and for questions, and the size of the audience and their backgrounds, which will allow the presentation to be pitched at the appropriate level.

See what the ambience and temperature are like and check that the format of your presentation is compatible with the available computer. This is particularly important when embedding videos. Before you begin, look at the video on stand-by and make sure the lights are dimmed and the speakers are functioning.

For visual aids, Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Mac Keynote programmes are usual, although Prezi is increasing in popularity. Save the presentation on a USB stick, with email or cloud storage backup to avoid last minute disasters.

When preparing the presentation, start with an opening slide containing the title of the study, your name, and the date. Begin by addressing and thanking the audience and the organisation that has invited you to speak. Typically, the format includes background, study aims, methodology, results, strengths and weaknesses of the study, and conclusions.

If the study takes a lecturing format, consider including “any questions?” on a slide before you conclude, which will allow the audience to remember the take home messages. Ideally, the audience should remember three of the main points from the presentation. 2

Have a maximum of four short points per slide. If you can display something as a diagram, video, or a graph, use this instead of text and talk around it.

Animation is available in both Microsoft PowerPoint and the Apple Mac Keynote programme, and its use in presentations has been demonstrated to assist in the retention and recall of facts. 3 Do not overuse it, though, as it could make you appear unprofessional. If you show a video or diagram don’t just sit back—use a laser pointer to explain what is happening.

Rehearse your presentation in front of at least one person. Request feedback and amend accordingly. If possible, practise in the venue itself so things will not be unfamiliar on the day. If you appear comfortable, the audience will feel comfortable. Ask colleagues and seniors what questions they would ask and prepare responses to these questions.

It is important to dress appropriately, stand up straight, and project your voice towards the back of the room. Practise using a microphone, or any other presentation aids, in advance. If you don’t have your own presenting style, think of the style of inspirational scientific speakers you have seen and imitate it.

Try to present slides at the rate of around one slide a minute. If you talk too much, you will lose your audience’s attention. The slides or videos should be an adjunct to your presentation, so do not hide behind them, and be proud of the work you are presenting. You should avoid reading the wording on the slides, but instead talk around the content on them.

Maintain eye contact with the audience and remember to smile and pause after each comment, giving your nerves time to settle. Speak slowly and concisely, highlighting key points.

Do not assume that the audience is completely familiar with the topic you are passionate about, but don’t patronise them either. Use every presentation as an opportunity to teach, even your seniors. The information you are presenting may be new to them, but it is always important to know your audience’s background. You can then ensure you do not patronise world experts.

To maintain the audience’s attention, vary the tone and inflection of your voice. If appropriate, use humour, though you should run any comments or jokes past others beforehand and make sure they are culturally appropriate. Check every now and again that the audience is following and offer them the opportunity to ask questions.

Finishing up is the most important part, as this is when you send your take home message with the audience. Slow down, even though time is important at this stage. Conclude with the three key points from the study and leave the slide up for a further few seconds. Do not ramble on. Give the audience a chance to digest the presentation. Conclude by acknowledging those who assisted you in the study, and thank the audience and organisation. If you are presenting in North America, it is usual practice to conclude with an image of the team. If you wish to show references, insert a text box on the appropriate slide with the primary author, year, and paper, although this is not always required.

Answering questions can often feel like the most daunting part, but don’t look upon this as negative. Assume that the audience has listened and is interested in your research. Listen carefully, and if you are unsure about what someone is saying, ask for the question to be rephrased. Thank the audience member for asking the question and keep responses brief and concise. If you are unsure of the answer you can say that the questioner has raised an interesting point that you will have to investigate further. Have someone in the audience who will write down the questions for you, and remember that this is effectively free peer review.

Be proud of your achievements and try to do justice to the work that you and the rest of your group have done. You deserve to be up on that stage, so show off what you have achieved.

Competing interests: We have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: None.

• ↵ Rovira A, Auger C, Naidich TP. How to prepare an oral presentation and a conference. Radiologica 2013 ; 55 (suppl 1): 2 -7S. OpenUrl
• ↵ Bourne PE. Ten simple rules for making good oral presentations. PLos Comput Biol 2007 ; 3 : e77 . OpenUrl PubMed
• ↵ Naqvi SH, Mobasher F, Afzal MA, Umair M, Kohli AN, Bukhari MH. Effectiveness of teaching methods in a medical institute: perceptions of medical students to teaching aids. J Pak Med Assoc 2013 ; 63 : 859 -64. OpenUrl

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Business Jargons

A Business Encyclopedia

Presentation

Definition : A presentation is a form of communication in which the speaker conveys information to the audience. In an organization presentations are used in various scenarios like talking to a group, addressing a meeting, demonstrating or introducing a new product, or briefing a team. It involves presenting a particular subject or issue or new ideas/thoughts to a group of people.

It is considered as the most effective form of communication because of two main reasons:

• Use of non-verbal cues.
• Facilitates instant feedback.

Business Presentations are a tool to influence people toward an intended thought or action.

Parts of Presentation

• Introduction : It is meant to make the listeners ready to receive the message and draw their interest. For that, the speaker can narrate some story or a humorous piece of joke, an interesting fact, a question, stating a problem, and so forth. They can also use some surprising statistics.
• Body : It is the essence of the presentation. It requires the sequencing of facts in a logical order. This is the part where the speaker explains the topic and relevant information. It has to be critically arranged, as the audience must be able to grasp what the speaker presents.
• Conclusion : It needs to be short and precise. It should sum up or outline the key points that you have presented. It could also contain what the audience should have gained out of the presentation.

Purpose of Presentation

• To inform : Organizations can use presentations to inform the audience about new schemes, products or proposals. The aim is to inform the new entrant about the policies and procedures of the organization.
• To persuade : Presentations are also given to persuade the audience to take the intended action.
• To build goodwill : They can also help in building a good reputation

Factors Affecting Presentation

Audience Analysis

Communication environment, personal appearance, use of visuals, opening and closing presentation, organization of presentation, language and words, voice quality, body language, answering questions, a word from business jargons.

Presentation is a mode of conveying information to a selected group of people live. An ideal presentation is one that identifies and matches the needs, interests and understanding level of the audience. It also represents the facts, and figures in the form of tables, charts, and graphs and uses multiple colours.

Related terms:

• Verbal Communication
• Visual Communication
• Non-Verbal Communication
• Communication
• 7 C’s of Communication

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• PRESENTATION SKILLS

What is a Presentation?

Search SkillsYouNeed:

Presentation Skills:

• A - Z List of Presentation Skills
• Top Tips for Effective Presentations
• General Presentation Skills
• Preparing for a Presentation
• Organising the Material
• Writing Your Presentation
• Deciding the Presentation Method
• Managing your Presentation Notes
• Working with Visual Aids
• Presenting Data
• Managing the Event
• Coping with Presentation Nerves
• Dealing with Questions
• How to Build Presentations Like a Consultant
• 7 Qualities of Good Speakers That Can Help You Be More Successful
• Self-Presentation in Presentations
• Specific Presentation Events
• Remote Meetings and Presentations
• Giving a Speech
• Presentations in Interviews
• Presenting to Large Groups and Conferences
• Giving Lectures and Seminars
• Managing a Press Conference
• Attending Public Consultation Meetings
• Managing a Public Consultation Meeting
• Crisis Communications
• Elsewhere on Skills You Need:
• Communication Skills
• Facilitation Skills
• Teams, Groups and Meetings
• Effective Speaking
• Question Types

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The formal presentation of information is divided into two broad categories: Presentation Skills and Personal Presentation .

These two aspects are interwoven and can be described as the preparation, presentation and practice of verbal and non-verbal communication. 

This article describes what a presentation is and defines some of the key terms associated with presentation skills.

Many people feel terrified when asked to make their first public talk.  Some of these initial fears can be reduced by good preparation that also lays the groundwork for making an effective presentation.

A Presentation Is...

A presentation is a means of communication that can be adapted to various speaking situations, such as talking to a group, addressing a meeting or briefing a team.

A presentation can also be used as a broad term that encompasses other ‘speaking engagements’ such as making a speech at a wedding, or getting a point across in a video conference.

To be effective, step-by-step preparation and the method and means of presenting the information should be carefully considered. 

A presentation requires you to get a message across to the listeners and will often contain a ' persuasive ' element. It may, for example, be a talk about the positive work of your organisation, what you could offer an employer, or why you should receive additional funding for a project.

The Key Elements of a Presentation

Making a presentation is a way of communicating your thoughts and ideas to an audience and many of our articles on communication are also relevant here, see: What is Communication? for more.

Consider the following key components of a presentation:

Ask yourself the following questions to develop a full understanding of the context of the presentation.

When and where will you deliver your presentation?

There is a world of difference between a small room with natural light and an informal setting, and a huge lecture room, lit with stage lights. The two require quite different presentations, and different techniques.

Will it be in a setting you are familiar with, or somewhere new?

If somewhere new, it would be worth trying to visit it in advance, or at least arriving early, to familiarise yourself with the room.

Will the presentation be within a formal or less formal setting?

A work setting will, more or less by definition, be more formal, but there are also various degrees of formality within that.

Will the presentation be to a small group or a large crowd?

Are you already familiar with the audience?

With a new audience, you will have to build rapport quickly and effectively, to get them on your side.

What equipment and technology will be available to you, and what will you be expected to use?

In particular, you will need to ask about microphones and whether you will be expected to stand in one place, or move around.

What is the audience expecting to learn from you and your presentation?

Check how you will be ‘billed’ to give you clues as to what information needs to be included in your presentation.

All these aspects will change the presentation. For more on this, see our page on Deciding the Presentation Method .

The role of the presenter is to communicate with the audience and control the presentation.

Remember, though, that this may also include handing over the control to your audience, especially if you want some kind of interaction.

You may wish to have a look at our page on Facilitation Skills for more.

The audience receives the presenter’s message(s).

However, this reception will be filtered through and affected by such things as the listener’s own experience, knowledge and personal sense of values.

See our page: Barriers to Effective Communication to learn why communication can fail.

The message or messages are delivered by the presenter to the audience.

The message is delivered not just by the spoken word ( verbal communication ) but can be augmented by techniques such as voice projection, body language, gestures, eye contact ( non-verbal communication ), and visual aids.

The message will also be affected by the audience’s expectations. For example, if you have been billed as speaking on one particular topic, and you choose to speak on another, the audience is unlikely to take your message on board even if you present very well . They will judge your presentation a failure, because you have not met their expectations.

The audience’s reaction and therefore the success of the presentation will largely depend upon whether you, as presenter, effectively communicated your message, and whether it met their expectations.

As a presenter, you don’t control the audience’s expectations. What you can do is find out what they have been told about you by the conference organisers, and what they are expecting to hear. Only if you know that can you be confident of delivering something that will meet expectations.

See our page: Effective Speaking for more information.

How will the presentation be delivered?

Presentations are usually delivered direct to an audience.  However, there may be occasions where they are delivered from a distance over the Internet using video conferencing systems, such as Skype.

It is also important to remember that if your talk is recorded and posted on the internet, then people may be able to access it for several years. This will mean that your contemporaneous references should be kept to a minimum.

Impediments

Many factors can influence the effectiveness of how your message is communicated to the audience.

For example background noise or other distractions, an overly warm or cool room, or the time of day and state of audience alertness can all influence your audience’s level of concentration.

As presenter, you have to be prepared to cope with any such problems and try to keep your audience focussed on your message.   

Our page: Barriers to Communication explains these factors in more depth.

Continue to read through our Presentation Skills articles for an overview of how to prepare and structure a presentation, and how to manage notes and/or illustrations at any speaking event.

Continue to: Preparing for a Presentation Deciding the Presentation Method

See also: Writing Your Presentation | Working with Visual Aids Coping with Presentation Nerves | Dealing with Questions Learn Better Presentation Skills with TED Talks

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Open Access

Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

• Kristen M. Naegle

Published: December 2, 2021

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554
• Reader Comments

Citation: Naegle KM (2021) Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides. PLoS Comput Biol 17(12): e1009554. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554

Copyright: © 2021 Kristen M. Naegle. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The author has declared no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. A slide is a single page projected on a screen, usually built on the premise of a title, body, and figures or tables and includes both what is shown and what is spoken about that slide. Multiple slides are strung together to tell the larger story of the presentation. While there have been excellent 10 simple rules on giving entire presentations [ 1 , 2 ], there was an absence in the fine details of how to design a slide for optimal effect—such as the design elements that allow slides to convey meaningful information, to keep the audience engaged and informed, and to deliver the information intended and in the time frame allowed. As all research presentations seek to teach, effective slide design borrows from the same principles as effective teaching, including the consideration of cognitive processing your audience is relying on to organize, process, and retain information. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Each slide should have one central objective to deliver—the main idea or question [ 3 – 5 ]. Often, this means breaking complex ideas down into manageable pieces (see Fig 1 , where “background” information has been split into 2 key concepts). In another example, if you are presenting a complex computational approach in a large flow diagram, introduce it in smaller units, building it up until you finish with the entire diagram. The progressive buildup of complex information means that audiences are prepared to understand the whole picture, once you have dedicated time to each of the parts. You can accomplish the buildup of components in several ways—for example, using presentation software to cover/uncover information. Personally, I choose to create separate slides for each piece of information content I introduce—where the final slide has the entire diagram, and I use cropping or a cover on duplicated slides that come before to hide what I’m not yet ready to include. I use this method in order to ensure that each slide in my deck truly presents one specific idea (the new content) and the amount of the new information on that slide can be described in 1 minute (Rule 2), but it comes with the trade-off—a change to the format of one of the slides in the series often means changes to all slides.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

Top left: A background slide that describes the background material on a project from my lab. The slide was created using a PowerPoint Design Template, which had to be modified to increase default text sizes for this figure (i.e., the default text sizes are even worse than shown here). Bottom row: The 2 new slides that break up the content into 2 explicit ideas about the background, using a central graphic. In the first slide, the graphic is an explicit example of the SH2 domain of PI3-kinase interacting with a phosphorylation site (Y754) on the PDGFR to describe the important details of what an SH2 domain and phosphotyrosine ligand are and how they interact. I use that same graphic in the second slide to generalize all binding events and include redundant text to drive home the central message (a lot of possible interactions might occur in the human proteome, more than we can currently measure). Top right highlights which rules were used to move from the original slide to the new slide. Specific changes as highlighted by Rule 7 include increasing contrast by changing the background color, increasing font size, changing to sans serif fonts, and removing all capital text and underlining (using bold to draw attention). PDGFR, platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554.g001

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

When you present your slide in the talk, it should take 1 minute or less to discuss. This rule is really helpful for planning purposes—a 20-minute presentation should have somewhere around 20 slides. Also, frequently giving your audience new information to feast on helps keep them engaged. During practice, if you find yourself spending more than a minute on a slide, there’s too much for that one slide—it’s time to break up the content into multiple slides or even remove information that is not wholly central to the story you are trying to tell. Reduce, reduce, reduce, until you get to a single message, clearly described, which takes less than 1 minute to present.

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

When each slide conveys only one message, use the heading of that slide to write exactly the message you are trying to deliver. Instead of titling the slide “Results,” try “CTNND1 is central to metastasis” or “False-positive rates are highly sample specific.” Use this landmark signpost to ensure that all the content on that slide is related exactly to the heading and only the heading. Think of the slide heading as the introductory or concluding sentence of a paragraph and the slide content the rest of the paragraph that supports the main point of the paragraph. An audience member should be able to follow along with you in the “paragraph” and come to the same conclusion sentence as your header at the end of the slide.

Rule 4: Include only essential points

While you are speaking, audience members’ eyes and minds will be wandering over your slide. If you have a comment, detail, or figure on a slide, have a plan to explicitly identify and talk about it. If you don’t think it’s important enough to spend time on, then don’t have it on your slide. This is especially important when faculty are present. I often tell students that thesis committee members are like cats: If you put a shiny bauble in front of them, they’ll go after it. Be sure to only put the shiny baubles on slides that you want them to focus on. Putting together a thesis meeting for only faculty is really an exercise in herding cats (if you have cats, you know this is no easy feat). Clear and concise slide design will go a long way in helping you corral those easily distracted faculty members.

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

An exception to Rule 4 is to include proper citations or references to work on your slide. When adding citations, names of other researchers, or other types of credit, use a consistent style and method for adding this information to your slides. Your audience will then be able to easily partition this information from the other content. A common mistake people make is to think “I’ll add that reference later,” but I highly recommend you put the proper reference on the slide at the time you make it, before you forget where it came from. Finally, in certain kinds of presentations, credits can make it clear who did the work. For the faculty members heading labs, it is an effective way to connect your audience with the personnel in the lab who did the work, which is a great career booster for that person. For graduate students, it is an effective way to delineate your contribution to the work, especially in meetings where the goal is to establish your credentials for meeting the rigors of a PhD checkpoint.

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

As a rule, you should almost never have slides that only contain text. Build your slides around good visualizations. It is a visual presentation after all, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, on the flip side, don’t muddy the point of the slide by putting too many complex graphics on a single slide. A multipanel figure that you might include in a manuscript should often be broken into 1 panel per slide (see Rule 1 ). One way to ensure that you use the graphics effectively is to make a point to introduce the figure and its elements to the audience verbally, especially for data figures. For example, you might say the following: “This graph here shows the measured false-positive rate for an experiment and each point is a replicate of the experiment, the graph demonstrates …” If you have put too much on one slide to present in 1 minute (see Rule 2 ), then the complexity or number of the visualizations is too much for just one slide.

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

The type of slide elements, the number of them, and how you present them all impact the ability for the audience to intake, organize, and remember the content. For example, a frequent mistake in slide design is to include full sentences, but reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly), as a result of cognitive overload [ 4 ]. The visual channel is separate, allowing images/videos to be processed with auditory information without cognitive overload [ 6 ] (Rule 6). As presentations are an exercise in listening, and not reading, do what you can to optimize the ability of the audience to listen. Use words sparingly as “guide posts” to you and the audience about major points of the slide. In fact, you can add short text fragments, redundant with the verbal component of the presentation, which has been shown to improve retention [ 7 ] (see Fig 1 for an example of redundant text that avoids cognitive overload). Be careful in the selection of a slide template to minimize accidentally adding elements that the audience must process, but are unimportant. David JP Phillips argues (and effectively demonstrates in his TEDx talk [ 5 ]) that the human brain can easily interpret 6 elements and more than that requires a 500% increase in human cognition load—so keep the total number of elements on the slide to 6 or less. Finally, in addition to the use of short text, white space, and the effective use of graphics/images, you can improve ease of cognitive processing further by considering color choices and font type and size. Here are a few suggestions for improving the experience for your audience, highlighting the importance of these elements for some specific groups:

• Use high contrast colors and simple backgrounds with low to no color—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment.
• Use sans serif fonts and large font sizes (including figure legends), avoid italics, underlining (use bold font instead for emphasis), and all capital letters—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment [ 8 ].
• Use color combinations and palettes that can be understood by those with different forms of color blindness [ 9 ]. There are excellent tools available to identify colors to use and ways to simulate your presentation or figures as they might be seen by a person with color blindness (easily found by a web search).
• In this increasing world of virtual presentation tools, consider practicing your talk with a closed captioning system capture your words. Use this to identify how to improve your speaking pace, volume, and annunciation to improve understanding by all members of your audience, but especially those with a hearing impairment.

Rule 8: Design the slide so that a distracted person gets the main takeaway

It is very difficult to stay focused on a presentation, especially if it is long or if it is part of a longer series of talks at a conference. Audience members may get distracted by an important email, or they may start dreaming of lunch. So, it’s important to look at your slide and ask “If they heard nothing I said, will they understand the key concept of this slide?” The other rules are set up to help with this, including clarity of the single point of the slide (Rule 1), titling it with a major conclusion (Rule 3), and the use of figures (Rule 6) and short text redundant to your verbal description (Rule 7). However, with each slide, step back and ask whether its main conclusion is conveyed, even if someone didn’t hear your accompanying dialog. Importantly, ask if the information on the slide is at the right level of abstraction. For example, do you have too many details about the experiment, which hides the conclusion of the experiment (i.e., breaking Rule 1)? If you are worried about not having enough details, keep a slide at the end of your slide deck (after your conclusions and acknowledgments) with the more detailed information that you can refer to during a question and answer period.

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Well-designed slides that follow the first 8 rules are intended to help you deliver the message you intend and in the amount of time you intend to deliver it in. The best way to ensure that you nailed slide design for your presentation is to practice, typically a lot. The most important aspects of practicing a new presentation, with an eye toward slide design, are the following 2 key points: (1) practice to ensure that you hit, each time through, the most important points (for example, the text guide posts you left yourself and the title of the slide); and (2) practice to ensure that as you conclude the end of one slide, it leads directly to the next slide. Slide transitions, what you say as you end one slide and begin the next, are important to keeping the flow of the “story.” Practice is when I discover that the order of my presentation is poor or that I left myself too few guideposts to remember what was coming next. Additionally, during practice, the most frequent things I have to improve relate to Rule 2 (the slide takes too long to present, usually because I broke Rule 1, and I’m delivering too much information for one slide), Rule 4 (I have a nonessential detail on the slide), and Rule 5 (I forgot to give a key reference). The very best type of practice is in front of an audience (for example, your lab or peers), where, with fresh perspectives, they can help you identify places for improving slide content, design, and connections across the entirety of your talk.

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

The real presentation almost never goes as we planned in our heads or during our practice. Maybe the speaker before you went over time and now you need to adjust. Maybe the computer the organizer is having you use won’t show your video. Maybe your internet is poor on the day you are giving a virtual presentation at a conference. Technical problems are routinely part of the practice of sharing your work through presentations. Hence, you can design your slides to limit the impact certain kinds of technical disasters create and also prepare alternate approaches. Here are just a few examples of the preparation you can do that will take you a long way toward avoiding a complete fiasco:

• Save your presentation as a PDF—if the version of Keynote or PowerPoint on a host computer cause issues, you still have a functional copy that has a higher guarantee of compatibility.
• In using videos, create a backup slide with screen shots of key results. For example, if I have a video of cell migration, I’ll be sure to have a copy of the start and end of the video, in case the video doesn’t play. Even if the video worked, you can pause on this backup slide and take the time to highlight the key results in words if someone could not see or understand the video.
• Avoid animations, such as figures or text that flash/fly-in/etc. Surveys suggest that no one likes movement in presentations [ 3 , 4 ]. There is likely a cognitive underpinning to the almost universal distaste of pointless animations that relates to the idea proposed by Kosslyn and colleagues that animations are salient perceptual units that captures direct attention [ 4 ]. Although perceptual salience can be used to draw attention to and improve retention of specific points, if you use this approach for unnecessary/unimportant things (like animation of your bullet point text, fly-ins of figures, etc.), then you will distract your audience from the important content. Finally, animations cause additional processing burdens for people with visual impairments [ 10 ] and create opportunities for technical disasters if the software on the host system is not compatible with your planned animation.

Conclusions

These rules are just a start in creating more engaging presentations that increase audience retention of your material. However, there are wonderful resources on continuing on the journey of becoming an amazing public speaker, which includes understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind human perception and learning. For example, as highlighted in Rule 7, David JP Phillips has a wonderful TEDx talk on the subject [ 5 ], and “PowerPoint presentation flaws and failures: A psychological analysis,” by Kosslyn and colleagues is deeply detailed about a number of aspects of human cognition and presentation style [ 4 ]. There are many books on the topic, including the popular “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds [ 11 ]. Finally, although briefly touched on here, the visualization of data is an entire topic of its own that is worth perfecting for both written and oral presentations of work, with fantastic resources like Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” [ 12 ] or the article “Visualization of Biomedical Data” by O’Donoghue and colleagues [ 13 ].

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the countless presenters, colleagues, students, and mentors from which I have learned a great deal from on effective presentations. Also, a thank you to the wonderful resources published by organizations on how to increase inclusivity. A special thanks to Dr. Jason Papin and Dr. Michael Guertin on early feedback of this editorial.

• View Article
• PubMed/NCBI
• Google Scholar
• 3. Teaching VUC for Making Better PowerPoint Presentations. n.d. Available from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/making-better-powerpoint-presentations/#baddeley .
• 8. Creating a dyslexia friendly workplace. Dyslexia friendly style guide. nd. Available from: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide .
• 9. Cravit R. How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible. 2019. Available from: https://venngage.com/blog/color-blind-friendly-palette/ .
• 10. Making your conference presentation more accessible to blind and partially sighted people. n.d. Available from: https://vocaleyes.co.uk/services/resources/guidelines-for-making-your-conference-presentation-more-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-people/ .
• 11. Reynolds G. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. 2nd ed. New Riders Pub; 2011.
• 12. Tufte ER. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. 2nd ed. Graphics Press; 2001.

• Presentation Skills
• Skills & Tools

Presentation skills can be defined as a set of abilities that enable an individual to: interact with the audience; transmit the messages with clarity; engage the audience in the presentation; and interpret and understand the mindsets of the listeners. These skills refine the way you put forward your messages and enhance your persuasive powers.

The present era places great emphasis on good presentation skills. This is because they play an important role in convincing the clients and customers. Internally, management with good presentation skills is better able to communicate the mission and vision of the organization to the employees.

Importance of Presentation Skills

Interaction with others is a routine job of businesses in today’s world. The importance of good presentation skills is established on the basis of following points:

• They help an individual in enhancing his own growth opportunities. In addition, it also grooms the personality of the presenter and elevates his levels of confidence.
• In case of striking deals and gaining clients, it is essential for the business professionals to understand the audience. Good presentation skills enable an individual to mold his message according to the traits of the audience. This increases the probability of successful transmission of messages.
• Lastly, business professionals have to arrange seminars and give presentations almost every day. Having good presentation skills not only increases an individual’s chances of success, but also enable him to add greatly to the organization.

How to Improve Presentation Skills

Development of good presentation skills requires efforts and hard work. To improve your presentation skills, you must:

• Research the Audience before Presenting: This will enable you to better understand the traits of the audience. You can then develop messages that can be better understood by your target audience. For instance, in case of an analytical audience, you can add more facts and figures in your presentation.
• Structure your Presentation Effectively: The best way to do this is to start with telling the audience, in the introduction, what you are going to present. Follow this by presenting the idea, and finish off the presentation by repeating the main points.
• Do a lot of Practice: Rehearse but do not go for memorizing the presentation. Rehearsals reduce your anxiety and enable you to look confident on the presentation day. Make sure you practice out loud, as it enables you to identify and eliminate errors more efficiently. Do not memorize anything as it will make your presentation look mechanical. This can reduce the degree of audience engagement.
• Take a Workshop: Most medium and large businesses allow their employees to take employee development courses and workshops, as well-trained employees are essential to the success of any company. You can use that opportunity to take a workshop on professional presentation skills such as those offered by Langevin Learning Services , which are useful for all business professionals, from employees to business trainers and managers.

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24 Oral Presentations

Many academic courses require students to present information to their peers and teachers in a classroom setting. This is usually in the form of a short talk, often, but not always, accompanied by visual aids such as a power point. Students often become nervous at the idea of speaking in front of a group.

This chapter is divided under five headings to establish a quick reference guide for oral presentations.

A beginner, who may have little or no experience, should read each section in full.

For the intermediate learner, who has some experience with oral presentations, review the sections you feel you need work on.

The Purpose of an Oral Presentation

Generally, oral presentation is public speaking, either individually or as a group, the aim of which is to provide information, entertain, persuade the audience, or educate. In an academic setting, oral presentations are often assessable tasks with a marking criteria. Therefore, students are being evaluated on their capacity to speak and deliver relevant information within a set timeframe. An oral presentation differs from a speech in that it usually has visual aids and may involve audience interaction; ideas are both shown and explained . A speech, on the other hand, is a formal verbal discourse addressing an audience, without visual aids and audience participation.

Types of Oral Presentations

Individual presentation.

• Breathe and remember that everyone gets nervous when speaking in public. You are in control. You’ve got this!
• Know your content. The number one way to have a smooth presentation is to know what you want to say and how you want to say it. Write it down and rehearse it until you feel relaxed and confident and do not have to rely heavily on notes while speaking.
• Eliminate ‘umms’ and ‘ahhs’ from your oral presentation vocabulary. Speak slowly and clearly and pause when you need to. It is not a contest to see who can race through their presentation the fastest or fit the most content within the time limit. The average person speaks at a rate of 125 words per minute. Therefore, if you are required to speak for 10 minutes, you will need to write and practice 1250 words for speaking. Ensure you time yourself and get it right.
• Ensure you meet the requirements of the marking criteria, including non-verbal communication skills. Make good eye contact with the audience; watch your posture; don’t fidget.
• Know the language requirements. Check if you are permitted to use a more casual, conversational tone and first-person pronouns, or do you need to keep a more formal, academic tone?

Group Presentation

• All of the above applies, however you are working as part of a group. So how should you approach group work?
• Firstly, if you are not assigned to a group by your lecturer/tutor, choose people based on their availability and accessibility. If you cannot meet face-to-face you may schedule online meetings.
• Get to know each other. It’s easier to work with friends than strangers.
• Also consider everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. This will involve a discussion that will often lead to task or role allocations within the group, however, everyone should be carrying an equal level of the workload.
• Some group members may be more focused on getting the script written, with a different section for each team member to say. Others may be more experienced with the presentation software and skilled in editing and refining power point slides so they are appropriate for the presentation. Use one visual aid (one set of power point slides) for the whole group. Take turns presenting information and ideas.
• Be patient and tolerant with each other’s learning style and personality. Do not judge people in your group based on their personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender, age, or cultural background.
• Rehearse as a group, more than once. Keep rehearsing until you have seamless transitions between speakers. Ensure you thank the previous speaker and introduce the one following you. If you are rehearsing online, but have to present in-person, try to schedule some face-to-face time that will allow you to physically practice using the technology and classroom space of the campus.
• For further information on working as a group see:

Working as a group – my.UQ – University of Queensland

Writing Your Presentation

Approach the oral presentation task just as you would any other assignment. Review the available topics, do some background reading and research to ensure you can talk about the topic for the appropriate length of time and in an informed manner. Break the question down as demonstrated in Chapter 17 Breaking Down an Assignment. Where it differs from writing an essay is that the information in the written speech must align with the visual aid. Therefore, with each idea, concept or new information you write, think about how this might be visually displayed through minimal text and the occasional use of images. Proceed to write your ideas in full, but consider that not all information will end up on a power point slide. After all, it is you who are doing the presenting , not the power point. Your presentation skills are being evaluated; this may include a small percentage for the actual visual aid. This is also why it is important that EVERYONE has a turn at speaking during the presentation, as each person receives their own individual grade.

Using Visual Aids

A whole chapter could be written about the visual aids alone, therefore I will simply refer to the key points as noted by my.UQ

To keep your audience engaged and help them to remember what you have to say, you may want to use visual aids, such as slides.

When designing slides for your presentation, make sure:

• any text is brief, grammatically correct and easy to read. Use dot points and space between lines, plus large font size (18-20 point).
• Resist the temptation to use dark slides with a light-coloured font; it is hard on the eyes
• if images and graphs are used to support your main points, they should be non-intrusive on the written work

Images and Graphs

• Your audience will respond better to slides that deliver information quickly – images and graphs are a good way to do this. However, they are not always appropriate or necessary.

When choosing images, it’s important to find images that:

• support your presentation and aren’t just decorative
• are high quality, however, using large HD picture files can make the power point file too large overall for submission via Turnitin
• you have permission to use (Creative Commons license, royalty-free, own images, or purchased)
• suggested sites for free-to-use images: Openclipart – Clipping Culture ; Beautiful Free Images & Pictures | Unsplash ; Pxfuel – Royalty free stock photos free download ; When we share, everyone wins – Creative Commons

This is a general guide. The specific requirements for your course may be different. Make sure you read through any assignment requirements carefully and ask your lecturer or tutor if you’re unsure how to meet them.

Using Visual Aids Effectively

Too often, students make an impressive power point though do not understand how to use it effectively to enhance their presentation.

• Rehearse with the power point.
• Keep the slides synchronized with your presentation; change them at the appropriate time.
• Refer to the information on the slides. Point out details; comment on images; note facts such as data.
• Don’t let the power point just be something happening in the background while you speak.
• Write notes in your script to indicate when to change slides or which slide number the information applies to.
• Pace yourself so you are not spending a disproportionate amount of time on slides at the beginning of the presentation and racing through them at the end.
• Practice, practice, practice.

Nonverbal Communication

It is clear by the name that nonverbal communication are the ways that we communicate without speaking. Many people are already aware of this, however here are a few tips that relate specifically to oral presentations.

Being confident and looking confident are two different things. Fake it until you make it.

• Avoid slouching or leaning – standing up straight instantly gives you an air of confidence.
• Move! When you’re glued to one spot as a presenter, you’re not perceived as either confident or dynamic. Use the available space effectively, though do not exaggerate your natural movements so you look ridiculous.
• If you’re someone who “speaks with their hands”, resist the urge to constantly wave them around. They detract from your message. Occasional gestures are fine.
• Be animated, but don’t fidget. Ask someone to watch you rehearse and identify if you have any nervous, repetitive habits you may be unaware of, for example, constantly touching or ‘finger-combing’ your hair, rubbing your face.
• Avoid ‘voice fidgets’ also. If you needs to cough or clear your throat, do so once then take a drink of water.
• Avoid distractions. No phone turned on. Water available but off to one side.
• Keep your distance. Don’t hover over front-row audience members; this can be intimidating.
• Have a cheerful demeaner. You do not need to grin like a Cheshire cat throughout the presentation, yet your facial expression should be relaxed and welcoming.
• Maintain an engaging TONE in your voice. Sometimes it’s not what you’re saying that is putting your audience to sleep, it’s your monotonous tone. Vary your tone and pace.
• Don’t read your presentation – PRESENT it! Internalize your script so you can speak with confidence and only occasionally refer to your notes if needed.
• Lastly, make good eye contact with your audience members so they know you are talking with them, not at them. You’re having a conversation. Watch the link below for some great speaking tips, including eye contact.

Below is a video of some great tips about public speaking from Amy Wolff at TEDx Portland [1]

• Wolff. A. [The Oregonion]. (2016, April 9). 5 public speaking tips from TEDxPortland speaker coach [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNOXZumCXNM&ab_channel=TheOregonian ↵

communication of thought by word

Academic Writing Skills Copyright © 2021 by Patricia Williamson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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14.1 Organizing a Visual Presentation

Learning objectives.

• Identify key ideas and details to create a concise, engaging presentation.
• Identify the steps involved in planning a comprehensive presentation.

Until now, you have interacted with your audience of readers indirectly, on the page. You have tried to anticipate their reactions and questions as all good writers do. Anticipating the audience’s needs can be tough, especially when you are sitting alone in front of your computer.

When you give a presentation, you connect directly with your audience. For most people, making a presentation is both exciting and stressful. The excitement comes from engaging in a two-way interaction about your ideas. The stress comes from the pressure of presenting your ideas without having a delete button to undo mistakes. Outside the classroom, you may be asked to give a presentation, often at the last minute, and the show must go on. Presentations can be stressful, but planning and preparation, when the time and opportunity are available, can make all the difference.

This chapter covers how to plan and deliver an effective, engaging presentation. By planning carefully, applying some time-honored presentation strategies, and practicing, you can make sure that your presentation comes across as confident, knowledgeable, and interesting—and that your audience actually learns from it. The specific tasks involved in creating a presentation may vary slightly depending on your purpose and your assignment. However, these are the general steps.

Follow these steps to create a presentation based on your ideas:

• Determine your purpose and identify the key ideas to present.
• Organize your ideas in an outline.
• Identify opportunities to incorporate visual or audio media, and create or locate these media aids.
• Rehearse your presentation in advance.
• Deliver your presentation to your audience.

Getting Started: Identifying and Organizing Key Ideas

To deliver a successful presentation, you need to develop content suitable for an effective presentation. Your ideas make up your presentation, but to deliver them effectively, you will need to identify key ideas and organize them carefully. Read the following considerations, which will help you first identify and then organize key ideas:

• Be concise. You will include the most important ideas and leave out others. Some concepts may need to be simplified.
• Employ more than one medium of expression. You should incorporate other media, such as charts, graphs, photographs, video or audio recordings, or websites.
• Prepare for a face-to-face presentation. If you must deliver a face-to-face presentation, it is important to project yourself as a serious and well-informed speaker. You will often speak extemporaneously, or in a rehearsed but not memorized manner, which allows for flexibility given the context or audience. You will need to know your points and keep your audience engaged.

Determine Your Purpose

As with a writing assignment, determining the purpose of your presentation early on is crucial. You want to inform your readers about the topic, but think about what else you hope to achieve.

Are you presenting information intended to move your audience to adopt certain beliefs or take action on a particular issue? If so, you are speaking not only to inform but also to persuade your listeners. Do you want your audience to come away from your presentation knowing how to do something they that they did not know before? In that case, you are not only informing them but also explaining or teaching a process.

Writing at Work

Schoolteachers are trained to structure lessons around one or more lesson objectives. Usually the objective, the mission or purpose, states what students should know or be able to do after they complete the lesson. For example, an objective might state, “Students will understand the specific freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment” or “Students will be able to add two three-digit numbers correctly.”

As a manager, mentor, or supervisor, you may sometimes be required to teach or train other employees as part of your job. Determining the desired outcome of a training session will help you plan effectively. Identify your teaching objectives. What, specifically, do you want your audience to know (for instance, details of a new workplace policy) or be able to do (for instance, use a new software program)? Plan your teaching or training session to meet your objectives.

Identify Key Ideas

To plan your presentation, think in terms of three or four key points you want to get across. In a paper, you have the space to develop ideas at length and delve into complex details. In a presentation, however, you must convey your ideas more concisely.

One strategy you might try is to create an outline. What is your main idea? Would your main idea work well as key points for a brief presentation? How would you condense topics that might be too lengthy, or should you eliminate topics that may be too complicated to address in your presentation?

1. Revisit your presentation assignment, or think of a topic for your presentation. On your own sheet of notebook paper, write a list of at least three to five key ideas. Keep the following questions in mind when listing your key ideas:

• What is your purpose?
• Who is your audience?
• How will you engage your audience?

2. On the same paper, identify the steps you must complete before you begin creating your presentation.

Use an Outline to Organize Ideas

After you determine which ideas are most appropriate for your presentation, you will create an outline of those ideas. Your presentation, like a written assignment, should include an introduction, body, and conclusion. These components serve much the same purpose as they do in a written assignment.

• The introduction engages the audience’s attention, introduces the topic, and sets the tone for what is to come.
• The body develops your point of view with supporting ideas, details, and examples presented in a logical order.
• The conclusion restates your point of view, sums up your main points, and leaves your audience with something to think about.

Jorge, who wrote the research paper featured in Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , developed the following outline. Jorge relied heavily on this outline to plan his presentation, but he adjusted it to suit the new format.

Planning Your Introduction

In Chapter 12 “Writing a Research Paper” , you learned techniques for writing an interesting introduction, such as beginning with a surprising fact or statistic, a thought-provoking question or quotation, a brief anecdote that illustrates a larger concept or connects your topic to your audience’s experiences. You can use these techniques effectively in presentations as well. You might also consider actively engaging your audience by having members respond to questions or complete a brief activity related to your topic. For example, you may have your audience respond to a survey or tell about an experience related to your topic.

Incorporating media can also be an effective way to get your audience’s attention. Visual images such as a photograph or a cartoon can invoke an immediate emotional response. A graph or chart can highlight startling findings in research data or statistical information. Brief video or audio clips that clearly reinforce your message and do not distract or overwhelm your audience can provide a sense of immediacy when you plan to discuss an event or a current issue. A PowerPoint presentation allows you to integrate many of these different media sources into one presentation.

With the accessibility provided by the Internet, you can find interesting and appropriate audio and video with little difficulty. However, the clip alone will not sustain the presentation. To keep the audience interested and engaged, you must frame the beginning and end of the clip with your own words.

Jorge completed the introduction part of his outline by listing the key points he would use to open his presentation. He also planned to show various web links early on to illustrate the popularity of the low-carbohydrate diet trend.

Planning the Body of Your Presentation

The next step is to work with the key ideas you identified earlier. Determine the order in which you want to present these ideas, and flesh them out with important details. Chapter 10 “Rhetorical Modes” discusses several organizational structures you might work with, such as chronological order, comparison-and-contrast structure, or cause-and-effect structure.

How much detail you include will depend on the time allotted for your presentation. Your instructor will most likely give you a specific time limit or a specific slide limit, such as eight to ten slides. If the time limit is very brief (two to three minutes, for instance), you will need to focus on communicating your point of view, main supporting points, and only the most relevant details. Three minutes can feel like an eternity if you are speaking before a group, but the time will pass very quickly. It is important to use it well.

If you have more time to work with—ten minutes or half an hour—you will be able to discuss your topic in greater detail. More time also means you must devote more thought into how you will hold your audience’s interest. If your presentation is longer than five minutes, introduce some variety so the audience is not bored. Incorporate multimedia, invite the audience to complete an activity, or set aside time for a question-and-answer session.

Jorge was required to limit his presentation to five to seven minutes. In his outline, he made a note about where he would need to condense some complicated material to stay within his time limit. He also decided to focus only on cholesterol and heart disease in his discussion of long-term health outcomes. The research on other issues was inconclusive, so Jorge decided to omit this material. Jorge’s notes on his outline show the revisions he has made to his presentation.

You are responsible for using your presentation time effectively to inform your audience. You show respect for your audience by following the expected time limit. However, that does not mean you must fill all of that time with talk if you are giving a face-to-face presentation. Involving your audience can take some of the pressure off you while also keeping them engaged. Have them respond to a few brief questions to get them thinking. Display a relevant photograph, document, or object and ask your classmates to comment. In some presentations, if time allows, you may choose to have your classmates complete an individual or group activity.

Planning Your Conclusion

The conclusion should briefly sum up your main idea and leave your audience with something to think about. As in a written paper, you are essentially revisiting your thesis. Depending on your topic, you may also ask the audience to reconsider their thinking about an issue, to take action, or to think about a related issue. If you presented an attention-getting fact or anecdote in your introduction, consider revisiting it in your conclusion. Just as you have learned about an essay’s conclusion, do not add new content to the presentation’s conclusion.

No matter how you choose to structure your conclusion, make sure it is well planned so that you are not tempted to wrap up your presentation too quickly. Inexperienced speakers, in a face-to-face presentation, sometimes rush through the end of a presentation to avoid exceeding the allotted time or to end the stressful experience of presenting in public. Unfortunately, a hurried conclusion makes the presentation as a whole less memorable.

Time management is the key to delivering an effective presentation whether it is face-to-face or in PowerPoint. As you develop your outline, think about the amount of time you will devote to each section. For instance, in a five-minute face-to-face presentation, you might plan to spend one minute on the introduction, three minutes on the body, and one minute on the conclusion. Later, when you rehearse, you can time yourself to determine whether you need to adjust your content or delivery.

In a PowerPoint presentation, it is important that your presentation is visually stimulating, avoids information overload by limiting the text per slide, uses speaker notes effectively, and uses a font that is visible on the background (e.g., avoid white letters on a light background or black letters on a dark background).

Work with the list you created in Note 14.4 “Exercise 1” to develop a more complete outline for your presentation. Make sure your outline includes the following:

• An introduction that uses strategies to capture your audience’s attention
• A body section that summarizes your main points and supporting details
• A conclusion that will help you end on a memorable note
• Brief notes about how much time you plan to spend on each part of the presentation (you may adjust the timing later as needed)

Identifying Opportunities to Incorporate Visual and Audio Media

You may already have some ideas for how to incorporate visual and audio media in your presentation. If not, review your outline and begin thinking about where to include media. Presenting information in a variety of formats will help you keep your audience’s interest.

Use Presentation Software

Delivering your presentation as a slideshow is one way to use media to your advantage. As you speak, you use a computer and an attached projector to display a slideshow of text and graphics that complement the speech. Your audience will follow your ideas more easily, because you are communicating with them through more than one sense. The audience hears your words and also sees the corresponding visuals. A listener who momentarily loses track of what you are saying can rely on the slide to cue his or her memory.

To set up your presentation, you will need to work with the content of your outline to develop individual slides. Each slide should focus on just a few bullet points (or a similar amount of content presented in a graphic). Remember that your audience must be able to read the slides easily, whether the members sit in the front or the back of the room. Avoid overcrowding the slides with too much text.

Using presentation software, such as PowerPoint, allows you to incorporate graphics, sounds, and even web links directly into your slides. You can also work with available styles, color schemes, and fonts to give your presentation a polished, consistent appearance. Different slide templates make it easy to organize information to suit your purpose. Be sure your font is visible to you audience. Avoid using small font or colored font that is not visible against your background.

Use PowerPoint as a Visual Aid

PowerPoint and similar visual representation programs can be effective tools 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, seen in a 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 will 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 is 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.

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 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 which visual aid is the most important. 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 do not want to be in a position where the PowerPoint presentation is the focus and you are on the side of the stage simply helping the audience follow along. Slides should support you in your presentation, rather than the other way around. Just as there is a number one rule for handouts (do not pass them out at the start of your presentation), there is also one for PowerPoint presentations: do not use PowerPoint slides as a read-aloud script for your speech. The PowerPoint slides should amplify and illustrate your main points, not reproduce everything you are going to say.

Your pictures are the second area of emphasis you will 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 they clarify. Choose clear images that have an immediate connection to both your content and the audience, tailored to their specific needs. After the images, consider using 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 section for taking notes, 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 do not 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 will 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.

Incorporate Visual Media

Even if you do not use a slideshow to complement your presentation, you can include visual media to support and enhance your content. Visual media are divided into two major categories: images and informational graphics.

Image-based media, such as photographs or videos, often have little or no accompanying text. Often these media are more powerful than words in getting a message across. Within the past decade, the images associated with major news stories, such as the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, the Abu Ghraib prison abuses from 2004 to 2006, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, have powerfully affected viewers’ emotions and drawn their attention to these news stories.

Figure 14.1

Even if your presentation addresses a less dramatic subject, you can still use images to draw in your audience. Consider how photographs, an illustration, or a video might help your audience connect with a particular person or place or bring a historical event to life. Use visual images to support descriptions of natural or man-made phenomena. What ideas lend themselves to being explained primarily through images?

In addition, consider how you might incorporate informational graphics in your presentation. Informational graphics include diagrams, tables, pie charts, bar and line graphs, and flow charts. Informational graphics usually include some text and often work well to present numerical information. Consider using them if you are presenting statistics, comparing facts or data about several different groups, describing changes over time, or presenting a process.

Incorporate Audio Media

Although audio media are not as versatile as visual media, you may wish to use them if they work well with your particular topic. If your presentation discusses trends in pop music or analyzes political speeches, playing an audio clip is an obvious and effective choice. Clips from historical speeches, radio talk shows, and interviews can also be used, but extended clips may be ineffective with modern audiences. Always assess your audience’s demographics and expectations before selecting and including audio media.

Review the outline you created in Note 14.11 “Exercise 2” . Complete the following steps:

• Identify at least two to three places in your presentation where you might incorporate visual or audio media. Brainstorm ideas for what media would be effective, and create a list of ideas. (In Chapter 14 “Creating Presentations: Sharing Your Ideas” , Section 14.2 “Incorporating Effective Visuals into a Presentation” , you will explore different media options in greater depth. For now, focus on coming up with a few general ideas.)
• Determine whether you will use presentation software to deliver your presentation as a slideshow. If you plan to do so, begin using your outline to draft your slides.

Figure 14.2

Source: http://www.agenciabrasil.gov.br/media/imagens/2010/01/14/14.01.10RP5978.jpg/view

Planning Ahead: Annotating Your Presentation

When you make a presentation, you are giving a performance of sorts. It may not be as dramatic as a play or a movie, but it requires smooth coordination of several elements—your words, your gestures, and any media you include. One way to ensure that the performance goes smoothly is to annotate your presentation ahead of time.

To annotate means to add comments or notes to a document. You can use this technique to plan how the different parts of your presentation will flow together. For instance, if you are working with slides, add notes to your outline indicating when you will show each slide. If you have other visual or audio media to include, make a note of that, too. Be as detailed as necessary. Jotting “Start video at 3:14” can spare you the awkwardness of searching for the right clip during your presentation.

In the workplace, employees are often asked to deliver presentations or conduct a meeting using standard office presentation software. If you are using presentation software, you can annotate your presentation easily as you create your slides. Use the notes feature at the bottom of the page to add notes for each slide. As you deliver your presentation, your notes will be visible to you on the computer screen but not to your audience on the projector screen.

In a face-to-face presentation, make sure your final annotated outline is easy to read. It will serve to cue you during your presentation, so it does not need to look polished, as long as it is clear to you. Double space the text. Use a larger-than-normal font size (14 or 16 points) if that will make it easier for you to read. Boldface or italics will set off text that should be emphasized or delivered with greater emotion. Write out main points, as well as your opening and closing remarks, in complete sentences, along with any material you want to quote verbatim. Use shorter phrases for supporting details. Using your speaker notes effectively will help you deliver an effective presentation. Highlighting, all capital letters, or different-colored font will help you easily distinguish notes from the text of your speech. Read Jorge’s annotated outline.

Some students prefer to write out the full text of their face-to-face presentation. This can be a useful strategy when you are practicing your delivery. However, keep in mind that reading your text aloud, word for word, will not help you capture and hold your audience’s attention. Write out and read your speech if that helps you rehearse. After a few practice sessions, when you are more comfortable with your material, switch to working from an outline. That will help you sound more natural when you speak to an audience.

In a PowerPoint presentation, remember to have your slides in logical sequential order. Annotating your presentation before submitting it to your audience or your instructor will help you check for order and logical transitions. Too much text or data may confuse your audience; strive for clarity and avoid unnecessary details. Let the pictures or graphics tell the story but do not overload your slideshow with visuals. Be sure your font is visible. Look for consistency in the time limit of your presentation to gauge your level of preparedness.

Begin to annotate your outline. (You will probably add more notes as you proceed, but including some annotations now will help you begin pulling your ideas together.) Mark your outline with the following information:

• Write notes in brackets to any sections where you definitely plan to incorporate visual or audio media.
• If you are presenting a slideshow, add notes in brackets indicating which slides go with each section of your outline.
• Identify and set off any text that should be emphasized.

Key Takeaways

• An effective presentation presents ideas more concisely than a written document and uses media to explain ideas and hold the audience’s interest.
• Like an essay, a presentation should have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
• Good writers structure their presentations on the thesis, or point of view; main ideas; and key supporting details and create a presentation outline to organize their ideas.
• Annotating a presentation outline is a useful way to coordinate different parts of the presentation and manage time effectively.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Structure your Presentation, with Examples

August 3, 2018 - Dom Barnard

For many people the thought of delivering a presentation is a daunting task and brings about a  great deal of nerves . However, if you take some time to understand how effective presentations are structured and then apply this structure to your own presentation, you’ll appear much more confident and relaxed.

Here is our complete guide for structuring your presentation, with examples at the end of the article to demonstrate these points.

Why is structuring a presentation so important?

If you’ve ever sat through a great presentation, you’ll have left feeling either inspired or informed on a given topic. This isn’t because the speaker was the most knowledgeable or motivating person in the world. Instead, it’s because they know how to structure presentations – they have crafted their message in a logical and simple way that has allowed the audience can keep up with them and take away key messages.

Research has supported this, with studies showing that audiences retain structured information  40% more accurately  than unstructured information.

In fact, not only is structuring a presentation important for the benefit of the audience’s understanding, it’s also important for you as the speaker. A good structure helps you remain calm, stay on topic, and avoid any awkward silences.

What will affect your presentation structure?

Generally speaking, there is a natural flow that any decent presentation will follow which we will go into shortly. However, you should be aware that all presentation structures will be different in their own unique way and this will be due to a number of factors, including:

• Whether you need to deliver any demonstrations
• How  knowledgeable the audience  already is on the given subject
• How much interaction you want from the audience
• Any time constraints there are for your talk
• What setting you are in
• Your ability to use any kinds of visual assistance

Before choosing the presentation’s structure answer these questions first:

• What is your presentation’s aim?
• Who are the audience?
• What are the main points your audience should remember afterwards?

When reading the points below, think critically about what things may cause your presentation structure to be slightly different. You can add in certain elements and add more focus to certain moments if that works better for your speech.

What is the typical presentation structure?

This is the usual flow of a presentation, which covers all the vital sections and is a good starting point for yours. It allows your audience to easily follow along and sets out a solid structure you can add your content to.

1. Greet the audience and introduce yourself

Before you start delivering your talk, introduce yourself to the audience and clarify who you are and your relevant expertise. This does not need to be long or incredibly detailed, but will help build an immediate relationship between you and the audience. It gives you the chance to briefly clarify your expertise and why you are worth listening to. This will help establish your ethos so the audience will trust you more and think you’re credible.

Read our tips on  How to Start a Presentation Effectively

2. Introduction

In the introduction you need to explain the subject and purpose of your presentation whilst gaining the audience’s interest and confidence. It’s sometimes helpful to think of your introduction as funnel-shaped to help filter down your topic:

• Introduce your general topic
• Explain your topic area
• State the issues/challenges in this area you will be exploring
• State your presentation’s purpose – this is the basis of your presentation so ensure that you provide a statement explaining how the topic will be treated, for example, “I will argue that…” or maybe you will “compare”, “analyse”, “evaluate”, “describe” etc.
• Provide a statement of what you’re hoping the outcome of the presentation will be, for example, “I’m hoping this will be provide you with…”
• Show a preview of the organisation of your presentation

In this section also explain:

• The length of the talk.
• Signal whether you want audience interaction – some presenters prefer the audience to ask questions throughout whereas others allocate a specific section for this.
• If it applies, inform the audience whether to take notes or whether you will be providing handouts.

The way you structure your introduction can depend on the amount of time you have been given to present: a  sales pitch  may consist of a quick presentation so you may begin with your conclusion and then provide the evidence. Conversely, a speaker presenting their idea for change in the world would be better suited to start with the evidence and then conclude what this means for the audience.

Keep in mind that the main aim of the introduction is to grab the audience’s attention and connect with them.

3. The main body of your talk

The main body of your talk needs to meet the promises you made in the introduction. Depending on the nature of your presentation, clearly segment the different topics you will be discussing, and then work your way through them one at a time – it’s important for everything to be organised logically for the audience to fully understand. There are many different ways to organise your main points, such as, by priority, theme, chronologically etc.

• Main points should be addressed one by one with supporting evidence and examples.
• Before moving on to the next point you should provide a mini-summary.
• Links should be clearly stated between ideas and you must make it clear when you’re moving onto the next point.
• Allow time for people to take relevant notes and stick to the topics you have prepared beforehand rather than straying too far off topic.

When planning your presentation write a list of main points you want to make and ask yourself “What I am telling the audience? What should they understand from this?” refining your answers this way will help you produce clear messages.

4. Conclusion

In presentations the conclusion is frequently underdeveloped and lacks purpose which is a shame as it’s the best place to reinforce your messages. Typically, your presentation has a specific goal – that could be to convert a number of the audience members into customers, lead to a certain number of enquiries to make people knowledgeable on specific key points, or to motivate them towards a shared goal.

Regardless of what that goal is, be sure to summarise your main points and their implications. This clarifies the overall purpose of your talk and reinforces your reason for being there.

Follow these steps:

• Signal that it’s nearly the end of your presentation, for example, “As we wrap up/as we wind down the talk…”
• Restate the topic and purpose of your presentation – “In this speech I wanted to compare…”
• Summarise the main points, including their implications and conclusions
• Indicate what is next/a call to action/a thought-provoking takeaway
• Move on to the last section

5. Thank the audience and invite questions

Conclude your talk by thanking the audience for their time and invite them to  ask any questions  they may have. As mentioned earlier, personal circumstances will affect the structure of your presentation.

Many presenters prefer to make the Q&A session the key part of their talk and try to speed through the main body of the presentation. This is totally fine, but it is still best to focus on delivering some sort of initial presentation to set the tone and topics for discussion in the Q&A.

Other common presentation structures

The above was a description of a basic presentation, here are some more specific presentation layouts:

Demonstration

Use the demonstration structure when you have something useful to show. This is usually used when you want to show how a product works. Steve Jobs frequently used this technique in his presentations.

• Explain why the product is valuable.
• Describe why the product is necessary.
• Explain what problems it can solve for the audience.
• Demonstrate the product  to support what you’ve been saying.
• Make suggestions of other things it can do to make the audience curious.

Problem-solution

This structure is particularly useful in persuading the audience.

• Briefly frame the issue.
• Go into the issue in detail showing why it ‘s such a problem. Use logos and pathos for this – the logical and emotional appeals.
• Provide the solution and explain why this would also help the audience.
• Call to action – something you want the audience to do which is straightforward and pertinent to the solution.

Storytelling

As well as incorporating  stories in your presentation , you can organise your whole presentation as a story. There are lots of different type of story structures you can use – a popular choice is the monomyth – the hero’s journey. In a monomyth, a hero goes on a difficult journey or takes on a challenge – they move from the familiar into the unknown. After facing obstacles and ultimately succeeding the hero returns home, transformed and with newfound wisdom.

Storytelling for Business Success  webinar , where well-know storyteller Javier Bernad shares strategies for crafting compelling narratives.

Another popular choice for using a story to structure your presentation is in media ras (in the middle of thing). In this type of story you launch right into the action by providing a snippet/teaser of what’s happening and then you start explaining the events that led to that event. This is engaging because you’re starting your story at the most exciting part which will make the audience curious – they’ll want to know how you got there.

• Great storytelling: Examples from Alibaba Founder, Jack Ma

Remaining method

The remaining method structure is good for situations where you’re presenting your perspective on a controversial topic which has split people’s opinions.

• Go into the issue in detail showing why it’s such a problem – use logos and pathos.
• Rebut your opponents’ solutions  – explain why their solutions could be useful because the audience will see this as fair and will therefore think you’re trustworthy, and then explain why you think these solutions are not valid.
• After you’ve presented all the alternatives provide your solution, the remaining solution. This is very persuasive because it looks like the winning idea, especially with the audience believing that you’re fair and trustworthy.

Transitions

When delivering presentations it’s important for your words and ideas to flow so your audience can understand how everything links together and why it’s all relevant. This can be done  using speech transitions  which are words and phrases that allow you to smoothly move from one point to another so that your speech flows and your presentation is unified.

Transitions can be one word, a phrase or a full sentence – there are many different forms, here are some examples:

Moving from the introduction to the first point

Signify to the audience that you will now begin discussing the first main point:

• Now that you’re aware of the overview, let’s begin with…
• First, let’s begin with…
• I will first cover…
• My first point covers…
• To get started, let’s look at…

Shifting between similar points

Move from one point to a similar one:

• In the same way…
• Likewise…
• Equally…
• This is similar to…
• Similarly…

Internal summaries

Internal summarising consists of summarising before moving on to the next point. You must inform the audience:

• What part of the presentation you covered – “In the first part of this speech we’ve covered…”
• What the key points were – “Precisely how…”
• How this links in with the overall presentation – “So that’s the context…”
• What you’re moving on to – “Now I’d like to move on to the second part of presentation which looks at…”

Physical movement

You can move your body and your standing location when you transition to another point. The audience find it easier to follow your presentation and movement will increase their interest.

A common technique for incorporating movement into your presentation is to:

• Start your introduction by standing in the centre of the stage.
• For your first point you stand on the left side of the stage.
• You discuss your second point from the centre again.
• You stand on the right side of the stage for your third point.
• The conclusion occurs in the centre.

Key slides for your presentation

Slides are a useful tool for most presentations: they can greatly assist in the delivery of your message and help the audience follow along with what you are saying. Key slides include:

• An intro slide outlining your ideas
• A  summary slide  with core points to remember
• High quality image slides to supplement what you are saying

There are some presenters who choose not to use slides at all, though this is more of a rarity. Slides can be a powerful tool if used properly, but the problem is that many fail to do just that. Here are some golden rules to follow when using slides in a presentation:

• Don’t over fill them  – your slides are there to assist your speech, rather than be the focal point. They should have as little information as possible, to avoid distracting people from your talk.
• A picture says a thousand words  – instead of filling a slide with text, instead, focus on one or two images or diagrams to help support and explain the point you are discussing at that time.
• Make them readable  – depending on the size of your audience, some may not be able to see small text or images, so make everything large enough to fill the space.
• Don’t rush through slides  – give the audience enough time to digest each slide.

Guy Kawasaki, an entrepreneur and author, suggests that slideshows should follow a  10-20-30 rule :

• There should be a maximum of 10 slides – people rarely remember more than one concept afterwards so there’s no point overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
• The presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes as this will leave time for questions and discussion.
• The font size should be a minimum of 30pt because the audience reads faster than you talk so less information on the slides means that there is less chance of the audience being distracted.

Here are some additional resources for slide design:

• 7 design tips for effective, beautiful PowerPoint presentations
• 11 design tips for beautiful presentations
• 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea

Group Presentations

Group presentations are structured in the same way as presentations with one speaker but usually require more rehearsal and practices.  Clean transitioning between speakers  is very important in producing a presentation that flows well. One way of doing this consists of:

• Briefly recap on what you covered in your section: “So that was a brief introduction on what health anxiety is and how it can affect somebody”
• Introduce the next speaker in the team and explain what they will discuss: “Now Elnaz will talk about the prevalence of health anxiety.”
• Then end by looking at the next speaker, gesturing towards them and saying their name: “Elnaz”.
• The next speaker should acknowledge this with a quick: “Thank you Joe.”

From this example you can see how the different sections of the presentations link which makes it easier for the audience to follow and remain engaged.

Example of great presentation structure and delivery

Having examples of great presentations will help inspire your own structures, here are a few such examples, each unique and inspiring in their own way.

How Google Works – by Eric Schmidt

This presentation by ex-Google CEO  Eric Schmidt  demonstrates some of the most important lessons he and his team have learnt with regards to working with some of the most talented individuals they hired. The simplistic yet cohesive style of all of the slides is something to be appreciated. They are relatively straightforward, yet add power and clarity to the narrative of the presentation.

Start with why – by Simon Sinek

Since being released in 2009, this presentation has been viewed almost four million times all around the world. The message itself is very powerful, however, it’s not an idea that hasn’t been heard before. What makes this presentation so powerful is the simple message he is getting across, and the straightforward and understandable manner in which he delivers it. Also note that he doesn’t use any slides, just a whiteboard where he creates a simple diagram of his opinion.

The Wisdom of a Third Grade Dropout – by Rick Rigsby

Here’s an example of a presentation given by a relatively unknown individual looking to inspire the next generation of graduates. Rick’s presentation is unique in many ways compared to the two above. Notably, he uses no visual prompts and includes a great deal of humour.

However, what is similar is the structure he uses. He first introduces his message that the wisest man he knew was a third-grade dropout. He then proceeds to deliver his main body of argument, and in the end, concludes with his message. This powerful speech keeps the viewer engaged throughout, through a mixture of heart-warming sentiment, powerful life advice and engaging humour.

As you can see from the examples above, and as it has been expressed throughout, a great presentation structure means analysing the core message of your presentation. Decide on a key message you want to impart the audience with, and then craft an engaging way of delivering it.

By preparing a solid structure, and  practising your talk  beforehand, you can walk into the presentation with confidence and deliver a meaningful message to an interested audience.

It’s important for a presentation to be well-structured so it can have the most impact on your audience. An unstructured presentation can be difficult to follow and even frustrating to listen to. The heart of your speech are your main points supported by evidence and your transitions should assist the movement between points and clarify how everything is linked.

Research suggests that the audience remember the first and last things you say so your introduction and conclusion are vital for reinforcing your points. Essentially, ensure you spend the time structuring your presentation and addressing all of the sections.

• Open access
• Published: 05 June 2019

Good Practice for Conference Abstracts and Presentations: GPCAP

• Cate Foster   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6236-5580 1 ,
• Elizabeth Wager   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4202-7813 2 , 3 ,
• Jackie Marchington   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8482-3028 4 ,
• Mina Patel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9357-1707 5 ,
• Steve Banner   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7852-9284 6 ,
• Nina C. Kennard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8480-7033 7 ,
• Antonia Panayi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1997-3705 8 ,
• Rianne Stacey   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6516-3172 9 &

the GPCAP Working Group

Research Integrity and Peer Review volume  4 , Article number:  11 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Research that has been sponsored by pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology companies is often presented at scientific and medical conferences. However, practices vary between organizations and it can be difficult to follow both individual conference requirements and good publication practice guidelines. Until now, no specific guidelines or recommendations have been available to describe best practice for conference presentations.

This document was developed by a working group of publication professionals and uploaded to PeerJ Preprints for consultation prior to publication; an additional 67 medical societies, medical conference sites and conference companies were also asked to comment. The resulting recommendations aim to complement current good publication practice and authorship guidelines, outline the general principles of best practice for conference presentations and provide recommendations around authorship, contributorship, financial transparency, prior publication and copyright, to conference organizers, authors and industry professionals.

While the authors of this document recognize that individual conference guidelines should be respected, they urge organizers to consider authorship criteria and data transparency when designing submission sites and setting parameters around word/character count and content for abstracts. It is also important to recognize that conference presentations have different limitations to full journal publications, for example, in the case of limited audiences that necessitate refocused abstracts, or where lead authors do not speak the local language, and these have been acknowledged accordingly. The authors also recognize the need for further clarity regarding copyright of previously published abstracts and have made recommendations to assist with best practice.

By following Good Practice for Conference Abstracts and Presentations: GPCAP recommendations, industry professionals, authors and conference organizers will improve consistency, transparency and integrity of publications submitted to conferences worldwide.

Peer Review reports

Note on terminology

Company refers to any medical commercial organization involved with research, such as pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies and medical device manufacturers.

Company-sponsored refers to all types of research (preclinical and clinical, pre- and post-marketing) that is directly sponsored and/or funded by a company. While this classification does not necessarily include research performed under other types of funding arrangement, such as investigator-sponsored or investigator-initiated trials or research (where companies are not involved with conference presentations or publications), those involved in submitting investigator-initiated study material to conferences are encouraged to consider following these recommendations.

Conference is used to refer to meetings, often organized by academic societies, that invite submissions (usually as abstracts) presenting research findings on an aspect of medicine or science. Such conferences have a scientific (or programme) committee that reviews and selects presentations to be given at the meeting from the submitted abstracts.

Abstract refers to those submitted for consideration to scientific and medical conferences (see above).

Presentation refers to posters or slides developed from abstracts accepted for presentation at such conferences.

Lead author refers to the person who normally presents study findings at a conference and is usually listed as the first author. This is often the Principal Investigator.

Society sponsor refers to a member of the society that is holding the conference, who acts as sponsor (or guarantor) of a submitted abstract.

Presenting author refers to the person on the author list who attends the conference and presents the poster or abstract.

Non-author presenter or local presenter refers to a person who presents on behalf of the author group, but who is not listed as an author.

Introduction

Research that has been sponsored (see the ‘Note on terminology’ section for precise definitions of these terms) by commercial organizations (e.g. pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology companies) is often presented at scientific and medical conferences. These conferences are pivotal for the presentation of data from ongoing research projects and clinical trials to the relevant audience and are often the first opportunity to disclose and discuss potentially practice-changing data. They facilitate early communication of data long before publication of a full manuscript and also provide the opportunity to present results of additional analyses such as secondary and/or exploratory endpoints and post hoc analyses. However, while abstracts submitted to conferences are reviewed by a scientific committee for suitability and interest to the audience prior to acceptance, it is important to note that they are not considered peer-reviewed as they are not subject to the same rigorous peer-review process as are journal articles. Poster and oral presentations based upon accepted abstracts are rarely, if ever reviewed. Furthermore, a recent systematic review showed that less than 50% of all studies accepted as abstracts went on to be published in full following presentation at a conference [ 1 ]. While it is desirable to strive for full publication after a conference presentation to ensure transparency and allow healthcare professionals to make appropriate informed decisions based on the peer-reviewed literature, this is not always practical and/or achievable. Therefore, it is important that abstracts and conference presentations, particularly for company-sponsored research, are developed with as rigorous a process as that of a full publication, because these may ultimately become the only source for a particular analysis.

While there are recommendations on the preparation of journal articles and qualification for authorship [ 2 ], and guidelines for best practices in the publication of company-sponsored research [ 3 , 4 , 5 ], until now, no specific guidelines have been available to describe good practice and best principles for conference presentations. This has resulted in diverse practices and a lack of standard expectations for transparency and ethical approaches. Although some aspects of good practice in Good Publication Practice (GPP) [ 5 ] and in reporting guidelines such as CONSORT and PRISMA for Abstracts [ 6 , 7 ] can be applied to conference presentations, the most widely cited recommendations on authorship from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) relate exclusively to publications in peer-reviewed journals [ 3 ]. These recommendations were not designed for, and therefore are not fully applicable to, abstract submissions and conference presentations and are challenging to implement in practice. Building on the acceptance and recognition of the GPP guidelines (first published as GPP for Pharmaceutical Companies in 2003 [ 3 ], updated in 2010 [ 4 ] and most recently published as GPP3 in 2015 [ 5 ]), this article endeavours to extend their principles and to address challenges relating to the presentation of company-sponsored research at academic meetings. These recommendations, on Good Practice for Conference Abstracts and Presentations (GPCAP), focus on company-sponsored research (see the ‘Note on terminology’ section). However, they do not cover other company activities that may be linked to conferences (e.g. satellite symposia organized alongside scientific conferences, medical education and marketing activities) because these are governed by regional and national legislation or codes (e.g. EFPIA code of practice [ 8 ], FDA regulations [ 9 ]). As with the GPP guidelines, GPCAP focuses on the presentation of all types of company-sponsored research and the specific challenges surrounding this, rather than investigator-sponsored or investigator-initiated trials or research (where companies have no role in their presentation or publication), although many of the principles also apply to the presentation of other types of research at scientific meetings. The aim of GPCAP is therefore to provide guidance on good submission and presentation practice for scientific and medical congresses, specifically addressing certain aspects where current publication guidelines are inadequate.

These recommendations were developed after informal discussions among a group of individuals who have wide experience of working with authors to develop abstracts, posters and slides for oral presentations reporting company-sponsored research. The main impetus for this article arose from a meeting regarding GPP3 updates (with which some of the authors had been involved). Prior to this meeting, two authors had noted that even the revised GPP3 guidelines contained limited advice for conference abstracts and presentations. Meeting participants discussed the requirement for clearer guidance and formed a working group to address this gap. At this point, invitations to join the group were extended to potential authors known to have previously presented relevant research at meetings of the International Society of Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) or had a known interest in conference presentations. This also ensured a broader global representation and improved the balance between pharmaceutical and medical communication agency representation. The authors all work or have worked for pharmaceutical companies and/or medical communication agencies (see the ‘Competing interest’ section for specific details). After a search for recommendations and guidelines on this topic revealed nothing specific (either in ICMJE or in a search on EQUATOR), the authors developed an initial outline for this article; individuals worked on pre-agreed sections and then a collective review of the full draft, comprising all sections was completed (see ‘Authors’ contributions’ for specific details). The resulting article was posted as a preprint on PeerJ [ 10 ] on 19 October 2017 for open comment. All comments received (and their responses) can be seen with the preprint on the PeerJ website. These comments were used to revise the recommendations. Some authors invited informal consultation from colleagues, and a courtesy legal review, as appropriate, was completed to ensure compliance with employee company policies. The copyright section was reviewed specifically for appropriate interpretation of copyright law. In addition to the preprint, 65 medical societies and medical conference sites, and two for-profit companies that run conferences on behalf of societies, were contacted for comment via contact emails listed on their websites or via ‘contact us’ options found on their websites. The societies and conferences and conference service companies were selected by recommendation from within the author group, to ensure balance across therapeutic areas, geography and variety of website submission sophistication. Only one of these societies/companies responded. All comments received on the preprint by 10 July 2018 were collated and discussed, and this final version was generated. The preprint was viewed by 2769 unique visitors and downloaded 3300 times between 19 October 2017 and 25 March 2019.

The recommendations are given here by topic, and so there is some overlap by intention, to ensure that all the key elements for any given topic appear together and allow readers to browse by topic.

Recommendations

The following principles aim to cover the key areas relevant for submissions to any research-based conference.

Author listings should reflect those who did the research and can take accountability for its conduct, and for the analysis and interpretation of the findings. Criteria for authorship of conference abstracts and presentations should generally be the same as those for full publications, although there can be occasions where local presenters may be included as authors, for example, where a conference requires a presenter to be listed as an author.

All authors should be involved in the development, and approve the final version, of any abstract, poster or slides that bears their names. For studies involving large numbers of researchers it may be most efficient for a subgroup of those involved in the studies to develop conference abstracts and presentations (similar to the use of a writing group to develop publications from large studies).

Posters and slides should list key contributors and describe their contributions to the research and development of the presentation.

Study registration numbers (e.g. ClinicalTrials.gov , EudraCT, PROSPERO) should be included on abstracts, posters and slides.

All sources of funding for the research and its presentation, and any author conflicts of interest, should be disclosed on posters and slides, on the conference submission site, and if space permits, on abstracts.

Any medical writing support and associated funding should be acknowledged on posters and slides, on the conference submission site, and if space permits, on abstracts.

These recommendations are mapped against the development of an abstract and subsequent conference presentation workflow in Fig.  1 , referenced by section number.

Roadmap of recommendations following abstract and presentation development stages

Recommendations for conference organizers

Conference organizers should:

encourage the inclusion of contributor lists on posters and slides;

include a field for trial registration details on abstract forms (outside the word or character limit) and publish this information with the abstract;

include a field for sponsor information on abstract forms (outside the word or character limit) and publish this information with the abstract;

include a field for disclosing medical writing support on abstract forms (outside the word or character limit) and publish this information with the abstract;

use ORCID identifiers (individual researcher identifiers [ 11 ]) to identify authors and presenters;

not set arbitrary limits on the number of authors, and permit the use of study group names; and

distinguish between authors (meeting the ICMJE criteria) and any additional individuals (who are not authors or contributors) included in the submission, for example, as a result of a requirement for a society member to sponsor submissions. With limited space in any printed book of abstracts, this information might be restricted to appearing with the online version of the abstract.

1.0 Authorship

1.1 authors.

1.1.1 The author listing on conference abstracts and presentations should reflect the people who did the research or contributed substantially to the design of the study or to the interpretation of the results, and who were involved in the development of the presentation and who are willing to take responsibility for the findings. Authorship and author order should be agreed by all authors (see 1.1.5 for factors to consider). While the authorship criteria recommended by the ICMJE are widely used for journal articles [ 2 ], GPP3 recognizes that it may be necessary to adopt slightly different criteria for conference abstracts and presentations [ 5 ]. For example, while all named authors should review (at least once), approve the content of abstracts and presentations and be willing to take responsibility for the findings, it may be impractical to expect all authors to contribute to drafting and critically revising abstracts in the same way as for full manuscripts, because of the abstract brevity, time constraints, etc. There is an argument for limiting the authors to a number that can meaningfully comment and review an abstract (see 1.2.1) and using a study group to identify others involved in the wider study. Our collective past experience indicates that it becomes impractical for everyone to be involved in a group with more than 10 authors, which is also the maximum number suggested by GPP3 [ 5 ].

1.1.2 Authorship criteria for all anticipated journal articles and primary conference presentations should, ideally, be agreed at the start of the research, and author listings for subsequent secondary abstracts and presentations should be finalized well before work starts on the secondary material [ 12 ]. As with journal publications, whatever criteria are used to determine authorship should be applied equally to all authors, regardless of whether they are company employees, contractors, independent clinicians, researchers or consultants.

1.1.3 Authors and contributors should have access to all relevant study materials and data to permit them to understand the research findings. Abstracts may need to be developed soon after results are analysed and before a final clinical study report is available. In such cases, authors should always have access to the protocol, statistical tables and any other information necessary to discuss and develop the planned abstract and presentation.

1.1.4 If individuals are authors on abstracts and presentations written in languages in which they are not proficient, companies should work with them and offer whatever reasonable assistance is required to permit them to discuss and review material effectively (e.g. to provide translations for the authors, or a discussion with an interpreter or local investigator/presenter who can read and explain the text). Authors may also choose not to be listed for such a conference abstract and presentation (see also 1.1.6).

1.1.5 Whatever convention is (or will be) used to determine the order of authors on the related full publications in journals should generally also be used to determine the order of listing on conference abstracts and presentations. The final order should be agreed by all authors; however, conference requirements (e.g. listing the presenting author first) must be respected. In cases where first or last co-authorship is requested, the conference organizers should be contacted for guidance.

1.1.6 While the authorship of conference abstracts and presentations should accurately reflect those who were involved in the research, individuals who meet the ICMJE authorship criteria (and may be listed on a subsequent full publication) may choose not to be listed for a conference abstract and presentation (e.g. if they are unable to review and/or approve the material within the deadline). While this individual choice should be respected, significant contributions to the research should be acknowledged where possible; that is, in a contributor list included on the presentation.

1.1.7 Conference organizers should encourage the use of ORCID identifiers to identify authors on abstracts and presentations, to avoid ambiguity between authors with similar or identical names. (Note: many journals and institutions now require authors to include their ORCID identifier at manuscript submission.)

1.2 Contributors/study groups

1.2.1 We encourage conferences (and company sponsors) not to limit the number of authors (or contributors) who may be listed on an abstract or presentation, because this practice may prevent the author list from accurately reflecting who did the work. However, named authors should be limited to those who have actively participated in the development of the abstract (see 1.1.1). GPP3 recommends an author group of fewer than 10 [ 5 ]; above this number, naming a study group may be a more practical approach. Likewise, if the source data come from a study, and the authors involved in that study meet authorship criteria, then the use of a study group name is strongly recommended.

1.2.2 Study group names may be helpful to acknowledge contributions to projects involving a large number of people, in addition to named authors who have contributed both to the research and to developing the presentation. Inclusion of a study name, either in the title or by including a study group in the author listing, will facilitate linkage of conference abstracts and presentations with journal publications. However, this should not be a substitute for including a unique study identifier such as a registration number for clinical trials (e.g. ClinTrials.gov or EudraCT numbers), which is a more reliable linkage method because these can be used as search terms in relevant databases. Provision should be made for study group membership details to be added during abstract submission and made available via the conference website once an abstract has been accepted.

1.3 Presenters and society sponsors

1.3.1 While the ICMJE criteria are a useful starting point for determining authorship, they were not designed for conference abstracts and presentations. Therefore, in certain circumstances, and if all authors agree, it is permissible for somebody who does not (or will not) meet the ICMJE authorship criteria for a journal article to present findings at a conference. For example, a local presenter may be included (preferably in a contributor list and not as an author) if the authors of the conference presentation will not attend a particular meeting, do not speak the language required or are not members of the academic society hosting the meeting. This local presenter, for example, could be an investigator who recruited patients but did not contribute to the study design or interpretation of data and will not be involved in developing journal articles. In the contributor list, this person should be designated as ‘presenter’ to clarify their role. However, if the conference requires that only authors can present, then the new presenter will need to be added to the author list.

1.3.2 Abstract authors (including company authors) attending a conference should always be preferred as presenters over non-author presenters. In cases where an author is not available to present, and the conference acquiesces to a non-author covering the presentation, the non-author presenter should be familiar with the research design and findings and have a good knowledge of the subject area in order to respond to questions about the presentation even if, unlike the authors, they cannot take direct responsibility for the research. An appropriately qualified individual from the sponsoring company (e.g. Medical Director) could present study findings if authors are not available; however, individuals with a commercial role in the sponsoring company (i.e. sales or marketing) should not act as non-author presenters.

1.3.3 All those listed as authors on an abstract or presentation must be able to take accountability for the research (following the spirit of the ICMJE recommendations). Therefore, if conferences require a society member to sponsor a submission, and none of the authors or study investigators is a member, this sponsorship role should be distinguished from that of the study authors if the sponsor/member was not involved with the research. If an existing author happened to be a society member, then no such distinction would be necessary. If the conference wishes to list the society sponsor, then this role should be indicated on the abstract (e.g. by an asterisk) and in a contributor list (not the author list) on the presentation.

Figure  2 illustrates some scenarios to differentiate between authors and non-author presenters.

When is a presenter not an author? Different roles possible for authors and presenters of conference presentations

2.0 Conference abstracts

2.1 To facilitate linkage between conference abstracts and presentations, and subsequent publications, abstracts should include a study identifier such as a registration number (for clinical trials), study name, protocol number or grant number. To encourage this, conference organizers should require this information in a specific field on the submission form and publish it with the abstract.

2.2 Abstracts describing company-sponsored research should always name the sponsor and all funding sources (if more than the sponsor).

2.3 Authors or sponsoring companies may involve professional medical writers to support authors in the drafting of abstracts. All authors should agree to these arrangements and work closely with any writers and approve the final version. Space limitations on abstract submission sites usually preclude writing support acknowledgement. Conference organizers should consider requesting this information and publishing it with the abstract.

2.4 We encourage conference organizers to consider the requirements of reporting guidelines when setting limits on the length of abstracts. For example, CONSORT for Abstracts suggests that around 300 words may be needed to adequately report randomized clinical trials [ 7 ].

2.5 We also encourage conference organizers to maximize the available space for content in abstracts by not counting authors, affiliations, trial registration numbers and sponsor acknowledgments towards the word or character limit.

2.6 Most conferences will not consider reports of findings that have already been published in full (i.e. in a peer-reviewed journal). This requirement must be respected and, even if permitted, presenting findings after their full publication should be avoided. However, abstracts presenting findings or novel analyses that are not included in a full publication may be submitted if the conference permits this. In situations where a journal article is in preparation at the same time as abstract submission, subsequent submission of the article may overtake the abstract in acceptance, at which point the conference needs to be advised, and the journal also, to avoid issues of prior data release. It may be necessary to withdraw the abstract, or it might be possible for the journal and conference to come to a mutually acceptable arrangement regarding either delay of the article or amendment to the intended presentation. Posting summary results on a trial register (e.g. ClinicalTrials.gov , EudraCT) or a clinical study report to meet regulatory requirements is not regarded as full publication by the ICMJE [ 2 ] and should not prevent subsequent presentation at conferences.

2.7 As conference submission requirements become more detailed (and therefore labour-intensive), conference organizers should acknowledge that it is acceptable for the abstract submission process to be completed by a third party (e.g. a medical communications company) on behalf of the submitting author, with that author’s permission. Where feasible, the submission might be checked by the submitting author prior to the actual submission; however, there are some sites where submission has to be completed in one sitting, and on other occasions, time differences (and time pressures) may make this impractical.

3.0 Conference presentations (posters and slides)

3.1 general considerations.

3.1.1 Study identifiers (e.g., trial registration numbers) should be included on presentations to improve linkage between conference presentations and subsequent publications (see also Section 4).

3.1.2 All funding sources for the research, any assistance with the presentation (e.g. medical writing support, editorial assistance or design) or support for conference attendance and authors’ conflicts of interest should be clearly disclosed on posters and slides. For posters and slides, such disclosures should be clearly legible (i.e. not significantly smaller or lighter-coloured than the main text).

3.1.3 Author listing and order on posters and slides should be the same as that on the abstract. Authors should not be added to a presentation after the abstract is accepted. However, if an author is unavailable to work on a presentation after abstract acceptance, their name may be removed from the author list but their contribution (to the study and/or publication) should be acknowledged. If an author other than the first-named author is to present, this should be indicated without changing the author order. The principle is to retain the same information about authors as on the abstract for ease of identifying the related presentation. Similarly, the title of the presentation should not be changed after submission; thus, the titles of the abstract and poster or slides should be identical. [If someone not on the author list is to present, and this is known in time for poster preparation, the relevant name could be added as a footnote, or close to the author list thus: (Presenter: J. Doe, ABC Institute, City, Country).]

3.1.4 All named authors should contribute to the development of, and approve, the presentation (see 1.1.1). Authors should be given sufficient time for presentation development and review. Making significant changes to posters or slides after all-author approval should be avoided. If changes must be made after approval, the actual final version must be sent to all authors. As with journal articles, for large studies, it may be most efficient for a subgroup to coordinate the development of a presentation (similar to a writing group for an article). This should be considered when deciding authorship.

3.1.5 Each author’s contributions to the study and to the development of the presentation should be listed.

3.1.6 Conference presentations should include a list of contributors who have made a significant contribution to the research or the presentation, regardless of whether they are listed as authors or attending the meeting. Ideally, permission for such acknowledgment should be sought in writing.

3.1.7 Because abstracts are usually submitted several months before a conference, they may contain interim or preliminary findings. Therefore, by the time of the conference presentation, some details may have changed. If research findings change substantially between abstract submission and conference presentation and affect the conclusions of the research, we recommend that authors alert the conference to this discrepancy. This is particularly pertinent in the case of oral presentations (because abstracts are typically selected for oral presentations based on the impact of the findings). Regardless of whether the new data change the conclusions of the research, we recommend indicating (e.g. in a footnote) any data that are different from those on the accepted abstract.

3.1.8 Authors or sponsoring companies may involve professional medical writers in the production of posters and slides. Authors should agree to these arrangements and work closely with any writers, editors and/or designers throughout the development of the presentation. Such support should be disclosed on the presentation, along with source(s) of funding (see also 3.1.2).

3.2 Posters

3.2.1 While there are platforms where posters can be made permanently available (e.g. on conference websites or platforms such as F1000 Research), some journals regard this as prior publication which may jeopardize full publication. Authors should therefore check the policies of their target journal(s) and of the sponsor or funder before agreeing to a poster being publicly posted.

3.2.2 Posters are not peer-reviewed by conferences and may not describe all aspects of the research. Posters should therefore not be viewed as a substitute for a full article in a peer-reviewed journal. However, if a poster is publicly available (and, ideally, searchable via an indexing system or DOI), it may be cited until the full publication is available, although some journals consider citation of posters as unpublished information rather than full citations. See Section 6 for citation best practice.

3.2.3 The lead author should be given the first option to attend the poster session(s), but this role may be taken by other authors or a local presenter (if no author can attend or if no authors can present in the language of the conference). The poster presenter should ideally be agreed before the abstract is submitted, although it is understood that circumstances may change by the time of the actual conference (see 1.3.1).

3.2.4 While disclosures, funding sources, acknowledgements and contributions should be clearly noted on the main poster, supplementary sources can be used to expand on these if there is not enough room for detailed information, and may be accessed via a QR code (or similar link). Such content should normally be available until the research is published, in full, in a journal (at which point the link should be deactivated). If QR codes (or similar technology) are used to provide copies of the poster or to link to other scientific content, these should only be available to conference attendees, unless the conference elects to make the posters freely available after the conference. Links for the QR codes may be time-limited to close once the conference is finished. Supplementary materials may include translations. Supplementary material should be provided under the same usage conditions as the poster and indicate who is the copyright holder or licensee.

3.3 Slides for oral presentations

3.3.1 While the lead author is normally expected to present study findings at conferences (and is given the first option to do so), this may not be possible due to local language requirements, availability to travel, or personal circumstances, etc. If the lead author chooses not to present study findings, another author may give the oral presentation. If none of the named authors is available or able to give the presentation, a non-author presenter may present the findings if all authors agree to this and the conference permits it (see also 1.3.1 and 1.3.2). The presenter should be agreed before the abstract is submitted (and only changed if that person becomes unavailable). The lead author should discuss the contents of the presentation and the interpretation of the findings with the presenter (and co-authors, if possible) before the conference to ensure the authors’ views are correctly represented.

3.3.2 If a non-author presenter gives a presentation on behalf of the named authors (or study group), this should be indicated at the beginning of the presentation. The presenter’s conflicts of interest should be noted on the disclosure slide.

3.3.3 Recordings of oral presentations may be posted online by conference organizers but, as with posters, care should be taken to ensure this does not jeopardize full publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Slides alone (without the accompanying talk or speaker notes) may be hard to interpret and not provide full context, so care should be taken if these are made publicly available. As with posters (see 3.2.4), online sources may also be considered to host supplementary materials for presentations if they are made available after the presentation. If slides are made publicly available, this should not occur until after the presentation has been given and should only occur with the agreement of all authors and sponsors, who will need to consider any restrictions around the posting of the data and possible ‘prior publication’ concerns for later use (see 6.1.2).

3.3.4 Some scientific meetings offer Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit for attendance at oral presentations. Local regulations and requirements of the accreditation body for this must be respected.

4.0 Encore abstracts and presentations

4.1. It is permissible to present the same research findings at more than one conference if both the first and subsequent conferences allow this. This practice may be referred to as an ‘encore’ (or more specifically an encore abstract or encore presentation). However, presentations of the same findings to the same audience should be avoided.

4.2 Although encore abstracts are not considered to be redundant publications (unlike publication of the same findings in more than one journal), some conferences elect only to accept findings that have not been presented at other conferences, and such requirements must be respected.

4.3 When considering encore abstracts, the authors and sponsoring company should decide whether it is most appropriate to submit identical abstracts to multiple conferences or whether it is better to emphasize different aspects of a trial (e.g. those of interest to different audiences). Use of study identifiers can help identify that multiple conference abstracts and presentations are from a single study. However, to avoid any confusion, we recommend that encores should be specifically identified as such (e.g. by stating that the presentation is an ‘encore’ and listing where previous abstracts of all or some of the findings were presented) (see also 4.4 and 4.6). We also recommend that previous presentations should be listed on the presentation, if accepted.

4.4 Conference organizers should consider including a means of identifying encore abstracts (e.g. including details of prior presentations) on the abstract submission form. This information should not be included in the abstract word or character count.

4.5 Addition of new data to a previously accepted abstract may not necessarily constitute a new abstract: conference guidelines should be consulted to confirm if this is acceptable. If no specific guidelines are provided, then as a general guide, if the new iteration adds any new data other than an update on analyses already contained in a previous abstract, then the new iteration should be regarded as a new abstract.

4.6 Where encore abstracts, or updated abstracts that include previously presented data, are accepted, their presentations should indicate that this is not the first time of presentation, for example, by a statement on the poster or slides such as “Data/some data first presented at [conference name and date]”.

4.7 Encore checklist: When deciding whether to submit an encore abstract to a conference to reach different audiences, authors and study sponsors should consider the following points.

What is the overlap, if any, with the audience of the earlier conference (e.g. in terms of region, specialism or profession)?

Are there any differences in the licensing status of any products mentioned in the presentation between the first and subsequent conference locations? For example, if the first presentation occurred in a region where a product is licensed, but later presentation(s) will take place in a region where it is not yet licensed, this fact may need to be reflected. For international meetings, remember that participants will attend from several regions, so the licensing status in different countries should be clarified.

Presentation at multiple meetings might delay and/or potentially jeopardize the full publication of research in a peer-reviewed journal. Companies should consider whether resources would therefore be better spent on ensuring a timely submission to a journal rather than preparing several encore abstracts and presentations.

5.0 Copyright considerations

5.1 Copyright transfer or publishing licence agreements that are executed during the abstract submission process are common when abstracts are to be formally published (e.g. in a conference-specific journal issue). These agreements relate only to the abstract, not to any subsequent presentation, unless explicitly agreed otherwise.

5.2 Copyright in a presentation is normally held by the authors, unless they have assigned it either to the conference or the sponsoring company. Re-use of a poster (at a subsequent meeting or in another format, such as a poster book or handout) normally requires permission from the copyright holder(s). It may therefore be simplest for authors to assign usage rights to the sponsor company if encore presentations or other types of re-use are planned. If a company author is included, then the copyright for that individual’s contribution rests with the company (not the employee).

5.3 If a conference wishes to acquire usage rights for abstracts, slides, or posters, we recommend that the conference offers an open access option under a Creative Commons (CC) licence. We encourage the use of the least restrictive CC-BY licence, which will allow authors and sponsoring companies the usage rights for subsequent presentations, as well as future publications. If presentations contain third-party material to which the authors do not hold copyright, it should be the responsibility of the conference organizers to clear rights for any further usage. The authors cannot be expected to anticipate the future use of materials by the conference organizers.

5.4 As for any publication, permission must be sought for use of third-party copyrighted material (e.g. a figure) in a presentation (and again for any encore presentations). Material should not be altered simply to avoid having to obtain permission from the copyright holder.

5.5 Peer-to-peer presentation at a scholarly conference by a researcher is generally considered to be fair dealing (UK) [ 13 ] or fair use (USA) [ 14 ], which does not require copyright permission. Any other use of a presentation by a company outside the conference will most likely be considered commercial use, for which permission from the rights holder(s) will be necessary.

6.0 Citing conference material

6.1 References (or citations) in scientific texts provide readers with source or background material and are used to justify or support statements. To be useable, the referenced material must be both permanently accessible and reliable; therefore, citations to full publications in journals that apply rigorous peer review are the ideal. However, if citations are needed for research that has not yet been fully published in a peer-reviewed journal, abstracts that have undergone scientific review (and on the basis of that have been accepted for presentation by a conference) may be cited, especially if they have also been published in a journal and are therefore permanently accessible and discoverable. Abstracts should not be cited after the full (primary) publication has been accepted by a journal.

6.2 Posters and slides are not peer-reviewed by conferences and are often not permanently or widely accessible or discoverable. Citations to posters or slides should therefore be avoided (see 6.1). However, if a poster or slide set is publicly available (and, ideally, discoverable via an indexing system or DOI), it may be cited until the full publication is available (although some journals consider citation of posters or slides as unpublished information rather than full citations). Authors and sponsor companies should ensure that publishing posters or slides online does not jeopardize full publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

6.3 To avoid citing conference posters or slides, companies should consider other dissemination routes such as listing findings as ‘Data on File’ (i.e. an unpublished data package held by the pharmaceutical company, which then should be supplied to anyone requesting those data).

6.4 If specific findings that were presented at a conference are omitted from a journal article (e.g. because of space constraints), they could be made accessible as supplementary material.

These recommendations summarize the authors’ collective experience with a view to outlining the underlying principles for best practice and providing guidance on the practicalities for navigating conference requirements. We did consider whether some of our recommendations could be accomplished by amendments to company–author agreements, but decided that such recommendations for ‘good practice for author agreements’ were beyond the remit and scope of this article and that GPP3 [ 5 ] adequately covers this aspect of author–sponsor relationship. Many of these recommendations are drawn from the working group’s experience across a variety of disease areas and conferences. However, this is also a limitation, in that by the nature of the authors’ work, their experience lies in conferences and conference submission systems with strong industry involvement. We believe that these recommendations could be applied to any type of scientific/medical conference and are as relevant to academic research as to company-sponsored research. Conferences maintain their value to the scientific community by covering the latest research and providing a forum for discussion: this value must not be lost due to lack of transparency or ethics in the preparation and presentation of the new data. By following these recommendations, industry professionals, authors and conference organizers will improve consistency, transparency and integrity of publications submitted to conferences worldwide.

It is earnestly hoped that future input from conference organizers and societies, as well anyone involved in submitting research to conferences, will augment and strengthen these recommendations. We therefore welcome feedback via the website ( https://gpcap.org ).

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Peter Llewellyn of Network Pharma, for hosting the meeting on GPP3 that acted as a catalyst for getting these recommendations underway.

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Contributions

CF raised the initial suggestion for guidelines, co-developed preliminary sections of text for the initial draft and discussed comments and revisions, reviewed all versions and approved the submitted version. EW drafted the Principles section and other portions of the text, discussed comments and revisions, reviewed all versions and approved the submitted version. JM consulted on the initial suggestion for these guidelines, drafted the Copyright section and other portions of the text, discussed comments and revisions, reviewed all versions and approved the submitted version. MP co-developed the foundation of the Encore Presentations section, discussed comments and revisions, reviewed all versions and approved the submitted version. SB consulted on the initial suggestion for these guidelines, assisted in the development of the initial draft, reviewed all subsequent drafts and approved the submitted version. NK drafted the abstract and other portions of the text, discussed comments and revisions, reviewed all versions and approved the submitted version. AP developed several sections with the author group, discussed comments and revisions, reviewed all versions and approved the submitted version. RS consulted on the initial suggestion for these guidelines, co-developed preliminary sections of text for the initial draft, discussed comments and revisions, incorporated feedback on the pre-print version, reviewed all versions and approved the submitted version. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Cate Foster, Jackie Marchington, Steve Banner and Nina C Kennard work for medical communication agencies that provide professional medical writing or editing services to not-for-profit and for-profit clients.

Elizabeth Wager is self-employed and provides training, consultancy and editing services on medical publishing and publication ethics for pharmaceutical companies, medical communication agencies, publishers, universities and academic societies.

Mina Patel and Antonia Panayi work in Global Medical Affairs functions within the pharmaceutical industry.

Rianne Stacey worked for a medical communication agency (see above) during the majority of the time the work was done and now works at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Oxford, UK, in a Global Medical Affairs function within the pharmaceutical industry.

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Foster, C., Wager, E., Marchington, J. et al. Good Practice for Conference Abstracts and Presentations: GPCAP. Res Integr Peer Rev 4 , 11 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-019-0070-x

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At least seven out of 10 Americans agree that presentation skills are essential for a successful career [ 1 ]. Although it might be tempting to think that these are skills reserved for people interested in public speaking roles, they're critical in a diverse range of jobs. For example, you might need to brief your supervisor on research results.

Presentation skills are also essential in other scenarios, including working with a team and explaining your thought process, walking clients through project ideas and timelines, and highlighting your strengths and achievements to your manager during performance reviews.

Whatever the scenario, you have very little time to capture your audience’s attention and get your point across when presenting information—about three seconds, according to research [ 2 ]. Effective presentation skills help you get your point across and connect with the people you’re communicating with, which is why nearly every employer requires them.

Understanding what presentation skills are is only half the battle. Honing your presenting techniques is essential for mastering presentations of all kinds and in all settings.

What are presentation skills?

Presentation skills are the abilities and qualities necessary for creating and delivering a compelling presentation that effectively communicates information and ideas. They encompass what you say, how you structure it, and the materials you include to support what you say, such as slides, videos, or images.

You'll make presentations at various times in your life. Examples include:

Making speeches at a wedding, conference, or another event

Making a toast at a dinner or event

Explaining projects to a team 

Delivering results and findings to management teams

Teaching people specific methods or information

Proposing a vote at community group meetings

Pitching a new idea or business to potential partners or investors

Why are presentation skills important? 

Delivering effective presentations is critical in your professional and personal life. You’ll need to hone your presentation skills in various areas, such as when giving a speech, convincing your partner to make a substantial purchase, and talking to friends and family about an important situation.

No matter if you’re using them in a personal or professional setting, these are the skills that make it easier and more effective to convey your ideas, convince or persuade others, and experience success. A few of the benefits that often accompany improving your presentation skills include:

Enriched written and verbal communication skills

Enhanced confidence and self-image

Boosted critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities

Better motivational techniques

Increased leadership skills

Expanded time management, negotiation, and creativity

The better your presenting techniques, the more engaging your presentations will be. You could also have greater opportunities to make positive impacts in business and other areas of your life.

Effective presentation skills

Imagine yourself in the audience at a TED Talk or sitting with your coworkers at a big meeting held by your employer. What would you be looking for in how they deliver their message? What would make you feel engaged?

These are a few questions to ask yourself as you review this list of some of the most effective presentation skills.

Verbal communication

How you use language and deliver messages play essential roles in how your audience will receive your presentation. Speak clearly and confidently, projecting your voice enough to ensure everyone can hear. Think before you speak, pausing when necessary and tailoring the way you talk to resonate with your particular audience.

Body language

Body language combines various critical elements, including posture, gestures, eye contact, expressions, and position in front of the audience. Body language is one of the elements that can instantly transform a presentation that would otherwise be dull into one that's dynamic and interesting.

Voice projection

The ability to project your voice improves your presentation by allowing your audience to hear what you're saying. It also increases your confidence to help settle any lingering nerves while also making your message more engaging. To project your voice, stand comfortably with your shoulders back. Take deep breaths to power your speaking voice and ensure you enunciate every syllable you speak.

How you present yourself plays a role in your body language and ability to project your voice. It also sets the tone for the presentation. Avoid slouching or looking overly tense. Instead, remain open, upright, and adaptable while taking the formality of the occasion into account.

Storytelling

Incorporating storytelling into a presentation is an effective strategy used by many powerful public speakers. It has the power to bring your subject to life and pique the audience’s curiosity. Don’t be afraid to tell a personal story, slowly building up suspense or adding a dramatic moment. And, of course, be sure to end with a positive takeaway to drive your point home.

Active listening

Active listening is a valuable skill all on its own. When you understand and thoughtfully respond to what you hear—whether it's in a conversation or during a presentation—you’ll likely deepen your personal relationships and actively engage audiences during a presentation. As part of your presentation skill set, it helps catch and maintain the audience’s attention, helping them remain focused while minimizing passive response, ensuring the message is delivered correctly, and encouraging a call to action.

Stage presence

During a presentation, projecting confidence can help keep your audience engaged. Stage presence can help you connect with your audience and encourage them to want to watch you. To improve your presence, try amping up your normal demeanor by infusing it with a bit of enthusiasm. Project confidence and keep your information interesting.

Watch your audience as you’re presenting. If you’re holding their attention, it likely means you’re connecting well with them.

Self-awareness

Monitoring your own emotions and reactions will allow you to react well in various situations. It helps you remain personable throughout your presentation and handle feedback well. Self-awareness can help soothe nervousness during presentations, allowing you to perform more effectively.

Writing skills

Writing is a form of presentation. Sharp writing skills can help you master your presentation’s outline to ensure you stay on message and remain clear about your objectives from the beginning until the end. It’s also helpful to have strong writing abilities for creating compelling slides and other visual aids.

Understanding an audience

When you understand your audience's needs and interests, you can design your presentation around them. In turn, you'll deliver maximum value to them and enhance your ability to make your message easy to understand.

Learn more about presentation skills from industry experts at SAP:

How to improve presentation skills

There’s an art to public speaking. Just like any other type of art, this is one that requires practice. Improving your presentation skills will help reduce miscommunications, enhance your time management capabilities, and boost your leadership skills. Here are some ways you can improve these skills:

Work on self-confidence.

When you’re confident, you naturally speak more clearly and with more authority. Taking the time to prepare your presentation with a strong opening and compelling visual aids can help you feel more confident. Other ways to improve your self-confidence include practicing positive self-talk, surrounding yourself with positive people, and avoiding comparing yourself (or your presentation) to others.

Develop strategies for overcoming fear.

Many people are nervous or fearful before giving a presentation. A bad memory of a past performance or insufficient self-confidence can contribute to fear and anxiety. Having a few go-to strategies like deep breathing, practicing your presentation, and grounding can help you transform that fear into extra energy to put into your stage presence.

Learn grounding techniques.

Grounding is any type of technique that helps you steer your focus away from distressing thoughts and keeps you connected with your present self. To ground yourself, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and imagine you’re a large, mature tree with roots extending deep into the earth—like the tree, you can become unshakable.

Learn how to use presentation tools.

Visual aids and other technical support can transform an otherwise good presentation into a wow-worthy one. A few popular presentation tools include:

Canva: Provides easy-to-design templates you can customize

Powtoon: Animation software that makes video creation fast and easy

PowerPoint: Microsoft's iconic program popular for dynamic marketing and sales presentations

Practice breathing techniques.

Breathing techniques can help quell anxiety, making it easier to shake off pre-presentation jitters and nerves. It also helps relax your muscles and get more oxygen to your brain.  For some pre-presentation calmness, you can take deep breaths, slowly inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.

While presenting, breathe in through your mouth with the back of your tongue relaxed so your audience doesn't hear a gasping sound. Speak on your exhalation, maintaining a smooth voice.

Gain experience.

The more you practice, the better you’ll become. The more you doanything, the more comfortable you’ll feel engaging in that activity. Presentations are no different. Repeatedly practicing your own presentation also offers the opportunity to get feedback from other people and tweak your style and content as needed.

Tips to help you ace your presentation

Your presentation isn’t about you; it’s about the material you’re presenting. Sometimes, reminding yourself of this ahead of taking center stage can help take you out of your head, allowing you to connect effectively with your audience. The following are some of the many actions you can take on the day of your presentation.

Arrive early.

Since you may have a bit of presentation-related anxiety, it’s important to avoid adding travel stress. Give yourself an abundance of time to arrive at your destination, and take into account heavy traffic and other unforeseen events. By arriving early, you also give yourself time to meet with any on-site technicians, test your equipment, and connect with people ahead of the presentation.

Become familiar with the layout of the room.

Arriving early also gives you time to assess the room and figure out where you want to stand. Experiment with the acoustics to determine how loudly you need to project your voice, and test your equipment to make sure everything connects and appears properly with the available setup. This is an excellent opportunity to work out any last-minute concerns and move around to familiarize yourself with the setting for improved stage presence.

Listen to presenters ahead of you.

When you watch others present, you'll get a feel for the room's acoustics and lighting. You can also listen for any data that’s relevant to your presentation and revisit it during your presentation—this can make the presentation more interactive and engaging.

Use note cards.

Writing yourself a script could provide you with more comfort. To prevent sounding too robotic or disengaged, only include talking points in your note cards in case you get off track. Using note cards can help keep your presentation organized while sounding more authentic to your audience.

Learn to deliver clear and confident presentations with Dynamic Public Speaking from the University of Washington. Build confidence, develop new delivery techniques, and practice strategies for crafting compelling presentations for different purposes, occasions, and audiences.

Article sources

Forbes. “ New Survey: 70% Say Presentation Skills are Critical for Career Success , https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2014/09/25/new-survey-70-percent-say-presentation-skills-critical-for-career-success/?sh=619f3ff78890.” Accessed December 7, 2022.

Beautiful.ai. “ 15 Presentation and Public Speaking Stats You Need to Know , https://www.beautiful.ai/blog/15-presentation-and-public-speaking-stats-you-need-to-know. Accessed December 7, 2022.

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Definitions of Advertising

Everything you need to know about the definitions of advertising. Advertising does not involve only presentation and promotion, but an element of persuasion too.

Any advertisement devoid of persuasion is not the part of advertising and will only be considered as a communication link disseminating some piece of information to the masses.

W.J. Stanton definition of advertising is – “Advertising consists of all the activities involved in presenting to a group a non-personal, oral or visual, openly sponsored message regarding a product, service or idea, this message, called an advertisement is disseminated through one or more media and is paid for by the identified sponsor”.

Learn about the definitions of advertising as given by different authors like Albert Lasker, Burt Manning, Wheeler opines, Robert W. Sarnoff, John J. Myers, Bay and Wheeler, R. H. Colley, William J Stanton, R. V. Zacher, John E. Kennedy, Henry Ford and a Few Others.

Definitions of Advertising as Provided by Different Authors and Institutions  

Definitions of advertising – provided by american marketing association.

American Marketing Association recognizes the term advertising as – any paid form of non- personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor. This definition mainly explains what advertising is and helps in distinguishing advertising from other communication initiatives with which it is often confused. Advertising is not the same as publicity.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Publicity is another form of communication like press releases or public relation {e.g. news conferences) that the media covers on their own. Advertising which make use of mass media, either in broadcast or in print form- as a vehicle to carry the advertising message to its audience involves some payment as a consideration by the advertiser for using media time and media space.

Moreover, advertiser (the one who wishes to initiate the advertising process) is a disclosed entity to the audience for his advertising initiatives. In the case of publicity the source of information is not disclosed to the audience and information spreads like news and not the promotional message.

This is an important point of difference between advertising and publicity as at times there are the instances of paid publicity also but without disclosing the identity of the sponsor. Advertising is a non-personal form of communication because it uses mass media forms. Personal selling, on the other hand, is a face-to-face communication with the target audience and is also referred as dyadic communication.

The AMA definition thus explains the typical characteristics of an advertisement rather than advertising as a promotional activity. An advertisement that we normally come across while watching television, reading newspaper or passing through the road is a form of announcement (a message) that has been paid for by an identified sponsor, has been sent through one or more mass media, and is directed to a specific group of individuals or organization (a market segment) with the explicit purpose of supporting the sale or purchase of a product, brand or service.

In nutshell, ‘advertisement’ is different from other forms of announcements and the message is actually the end result of the series of advertising related decisions. Thus, the AMA definition of the term advertising is limited in its scope as it does not suggests in any way the persuasive and creative aspects of advertising or indicate its functions and responsibilities.

As defined by Cohen, ‘Advertising is a business activity, employing creative techniques to design persuasive communications in mass media that promote ideas, goods and services in a manner consistent with the achievement of the advertiser’s objectives, the delivery of consumer satisfactions, and the development of social and economic welfare.’

Advertising does not involve only presentation and promotion, but an element of persuasion too. Any advertisement devoid of persuasion is not the part of advertising and will only be considered as a communication link disseminating some piece of information to the masses. Advertising as a persuasive activity is taken up around the knowledge of buyer’s needs and wants related to the product and creates favourable pre-dispositions in his mind.

It is expected that the product use will get translated into consumer satisfaction. Apart from referrals and good word of mouth, the parameter of consumer satisfaction is likely to be the immediate or future increase in sales volume. If the increase in sales volume is proportionate to the increase in advertising expenditure, the net outcome of advertising is generally profitability for an organization.

The reasons for the consumer and manufacturer to use advertising information are, therefore, compatible and mutually essential. Advertiser’s purpose for the use of advertising is to maximize profits and help consumers to maximize their satisfaction.

Advertising communication process-Advertising provides reassurances to consumers once they own or use the product and fits into pre to post purchase phases of consumer decision-making process. Advertising provides persuasive communications with intent to make the consumer aware, to create the feelings of familiarity, to generate the feelings for the brand, to create the image, or to provide reminder for trial purchase.

Due to such persuasions, it is expected that the consumer is likely to change both their attitude and actions. The advertising communication process as modeled by Batra, Myers and Aaker (1998). The model shows various effects of ad exposure leading to the formation of a brand attitude which is expected to result into favourable purchase behaviour.

Advertising decisions-Advertising, being a persuasive process requires planning and decision making for the development of an advertisement, i.e. an ad or an ad campaign. Some of the key decisions include ascertaining to whom the ad would be of interest (the potential buyer), what can be said in the ad and how can it be said, when the ad should be sent, and which mass media form among the many available would provide the best vehicle to carry the advertising message to the selected audience.

More precisely, concerning the development of an ad, the various decisions include:

1. The selection of advertising objectives.

2. The selection of target audience.

3. The determination of advertising budget.

5. 4. The designing of both message strategy and tactics.

6. The selection of media and determining the media use.

7. The evaluation of the outcome of ad exposure.

In short, these can be summarized as decisions about 5 M’s, i.e. mission, money, message, media, and measurement.

In consonance with overall marketing and business plans, advertising objectives provides clarity on the role of advertising and guide the strategic decisions on the media and message both.

These advertising decisions involve many people and activities, and are not merely restricted to inform or entertain. It must seek to change or reinforce the behaviour. The consumers, therefore, need to be aware enough of persuasive intent of the advertiser no matter how restrained and informative the message is.

In view of these discussions, advertising is more appropriately defined as, ‘Controlled, identifiable persuasion by means of mass communication media’ Advertising is a persuasive communication, which is controlled in terms of what to say, how to say, when to say, where to say and whom to say.

Unlike both publicity and personal selling advertising persuasion is identifiable to the recipient both for its source and purpose. The use of mass communication media allows advertising to have a simultaneous reach to multiple audiences, thus making it different from personal selling.

A participant of advertising process-Advertising is a complex phenomenon. It involves a number of activities that form the part of process and advertiser, media, advertising and other support organizations and audiences  are the various participants of the process. Since each of the participants has specific characteristics and role related to different advertising activities, they make specific contributions in determining the effectiveness of advertising process. We will now discuss each of the participants of the process in detail to understand their nature and role in the advertising process.

Advertiser is the one who initiates the advertising process and sends some kind of advertisement through mass media. Advertiser decides about the need of advertising for product promotion, the level and type of advertising and the level of ad spend. Advertiser may belong to various categories.

He may be a producer, wholesaler, retailers, service organization, distributor, school, hospital, politician, individual, a business or non-business organization. Any government organization at local. State or national level may also be the advertiser. Each of the advertisers takes up advertising activity for selling purpose or for public relation purpose.

Advertising agency is defined as ‘An intermediary offering specialized services to some advertisers, so that they may presumably better reach (and influence) their potential customers.’ ‘Advertising agency is an independent business composed of creative and business people who develop, prepare and place advertising in media for clients seeking to find customers for their goods and services.’

The two key services that most of the agencies tend to perform for advertisers as their clients, the advertisers, are- (i) creative services and development of ads and (ii) the selection and placement of ads in the media. Both the services are fundamental to the success of an ad and they require high quality of creativity. Advertisers hire independent agencies to plan and implement in part or all their advertising efforts.

Advertising agency works in a client-agent relationship with an advertiser. It offers to the potential client a collection of specialists, e.g. copywriters, art directors, television and radio producers, researchers advertising planners and many more as per the needs of the clients.

There are agencies of varied types. Some are large agencies offering full length services to its clients; the others are small in size offering only limited services or some specialized services like media buying only. The number and size of agencies tend to vary quite often as mergers and acquisitions are a regular feature of agency business.

Support Organizations or vendors provide specialized research and other services to an advertiser and agency. Their services facilitate advertising process. Examples include freelance copywriters, photographers, market researchers, and others.

AC Neilson Company, Org-Marg are some such independent research firms that attempt to measure audience size for various media vehicles like television programmes. Some of these organizations also attempt to measure the effects of advertising in terms of its recall, recognition or attitude change.

Media in its print or broadcast form provides the channel through which advertising message is delivered to the target audience. Media providers are significant participants of advertising process as they provide media space and/or time and also assist in the selection of media type and development of an ad.

The advertising message is gathered by non-advertising content of a particular media type like television, radio or newspaper. Other media like direct mail, billboards, posters, car cards and point of purchase, however, rely solely on the advertising message to attract the attention of the target audience. In a nutshell, advertising is a form of mass persuasion and mass media is advertisers’ conduit to reach.

Target Audience is the recipient of advertising communication who uses information for decision-making purpose. On receiving advertising information, audience may decide to act if information is found suitably appropriate. Otherwise, the information may be recalled at some later date.

Advertisers necessarily need to identify and understand who the recipients of advertising message are. Their needs, preferences, media habits have direct bearing on the overall advertising strategy especially the message and media strategy.

Definitions of Advertising by Prasoon Joshi and Burt Manning  

Advertising is defined as the paid, non-personal form of communication about products or ideas by an identified sponsor through the mass media so as to inform, persuade or influence the behaviour of the target audience.

Advertising is directed to a large number of people and not to one individual. That is why we call it non-personal. Advertising is communication about products or ideas. It may inform us about the features of iPod or new smart phone or spell out the need to have a cancer check-up.

An identified sponsor is the advertising company or an NGO soliciting donations. The mass media channels are the newspapers, magazines, radio, TV which carry the advertised message so that it reaches the people at once.

The advertising message either informs about the product or persuades people to buy it. It may influence them to vote for a specific candidate. Sometimes, the message may influence us not do certain things, say drug abuse or wastage of fossil fuels.

The simplest definition of an advertisement is that it is a ‘public announcement’. In earlier times to ‘advertise’ was merely to announce or inform some ads such as the ‘classifieds’ still do the same – announce the birth, death, engagements with little or no intention to persuade. Gradually, advertising evolved as a form of persuasive communication with the public.

In a free market economy, such communication is required to make intelligent choices. John E Kennedy, Lord and Thomas Ad Agency, described advertising as ‘salesmanship in print’. Albert Lasker endorses the same definition. Till the term ‘salesman­ship in print’ was coined, advertising was, viewed as information dissemination.

Salesmanship added a new dimension to the advertising process – that of persuasive skills of a salesman. It introduced the art of persuasion and made advertising a force to reckon with. Sidney Bernstein (1990) reinforces Kennedy’s definition by describing ‘advertising as a substitute for the human salesman’. Chris Jacques, chairman, BBDO Asia-Pacific thinks that advertising is the business of creative thinking for commercial advantage.

The following two definitions of advertising are also interesting:

Prasoon Joshi, Creative Director, South and South-east Asia, McCann Erickson asserts that as advertisers, we are in the communication business. Clients come to advertising agencies, though they can give a technical brief, to communicate their message in a consumer-friendly manner. The crux of advertising is effective communication. People who cannot communi­cate should not get into this business.

“Advertising is one of the important forces which serve the public interest. It is a form of open communication between those who sell and those who buy. It is a form of advocacy – open to any company or cause that wants to argue its case. The jury is the public. Every purchase is a vote. “– Burt Manning, JWT

Definitions of Advertising   – Provided by Eminent Authors and Institutions

The term ‘advertising’ is derived from the Latin word ‘advertere’ which means ‘to turn the attention’. Every piece of advertising aims at turning the attention of the readers or the listeners or the viewers or the onlookers towards a product or a service or an idea. So, we can say anything that turns the attention to an article or a service or an idea might be well called as advertising.

Advertisement or commercial, often just advert, ad, or ad-film is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organisation that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product. Advertisement revenue provides a significant portion of the funding for most privately owned television networks.

When aired on radio or television, an advertisement is called a commercial. Advertisements of this sort have been used to promote a wide variety of goods, services and ideas since the advent of television.

Wheeler opines, “Advertising is any form of paid non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services for the purpose of inducing people to buy.”

Advertising is defined as ‘mass communication of information intended to persuade buyers so as to maximize profits.’ (Littlefield) Advertising is “Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by business firms identified in the advertising message intended to lead to a sale immediately or eventually.”

Thus, advertising means any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor, intended to lead to a sale immediately or eventually. In short, ‘advertising is a paid form of impersonal, one-way mass communication for sales promotion.’

Salesmanship in print – Prof. Starch describes it as ‘selling in print’ i.e., presenting a commodity in print to the people in such a way that they may be induced to buy it.

Advertisement is a sort of ‘Machine made mass production method of selling.’

Definitions of Advertising by Several Authors

Advertising has been defined by several authors. Some of them are discussed here. “Advertising is paid, non-personal communication through various media by business firms.” It is always paid unlike the routine services of sales promotion, personal selling and publicity. Services for advertising are offered by advertising agencies which are experts in the areas of advertisement.

It is mass communication, for it informs and influences a large number of people. It is aimed at a big group of purchasers or potential purchasers. The medium of advertising is selected by the sponsor or the beneficiary.

Each medium of advertisement offers its own advantages, costs and drawbacks. Each is selected after due consideration of the potential market costs, expected benefits and availability. Adver­tising is aimed at a target group capable of purchasing the advertised goods.

The presentation of the sales message may be visual as well as oral. The sponsor has also been given importance under this definition. Advertising is an effective method of reaching people with product information. “Advertising is controlled, identifiable information and persuasion by means of mass communication media”.

It is considered controlled information because it has to use the time, space and content of the message effectively and economically. It is controlled because it is directed at a particular group. Advertising should not be haphazardly done to attract a number of persons without fruitful results.

It is identifiable because it identifies the product and the source of the product. The message should be definite and appealing to the target group. Persuasion is the main object of advertising. It is creative and information, and is designed to attract prospective buyers. It has been accepted by all the authors that advertising is mass communication.

Advertising management is different from mass communication by the producer. Advertising management is the main task of the advertiser who directs and controls the advertising activities. It covers analysis, and the planning, control and decision-making activities of the advertiser. Identification of markets and consumer behaviour are the vital parts of advertising management.

Definitions of Advertising   – By Famous Marketing Authors: W.J. Stanton, Robert W. Sarnoff, John J. Myers, Bay and Wheeler

The word advertising is derived from Latin root ‘Adverto’ meaning thereby ‘to turn to advertising’ i.e., anything employed to draw the attention of people towards any object or purpose. Definitions – It includes the whole process of promoting the sales. Personal selling and sales promotion get additional support only with pre-selling impact made by advertising.

It is the most common, deliberate and purposeful form of communication employed by an organization to inform, persuade and remind the target customers. A company’s message is carried by advertising media to reach the unknown group. It is a mass but paid form of communication through certain media to motivate people to make up their mind to buy the product or service to a number of potential buyers at a time. It is aimed at a group of persons and not an individual.

The communication of message may take the form of visual or oral messages for the purpose of informing and influencing the target group. The ultimate purpose underlying all advertising is increased awareness, which sooner or later turns the mind to buy the said product. It is a means of spreading the information.

This meaning is expressed by the scholars in their definitions as given below:

W.J. Stanton, “Advertising consists of all the activities involved in presenting to a group a non-personal, oral or visual, openly sponsored message regarding a product, service or idea, this message, called an advertisement is disseminated through one or more media and is paid for by the identified sponsor”.

Firstly, advertising is paid form, it is commercial transaction and it is this which distinguishes from publicity.

Secondly, it is non-personal in the sense that advertising messages, visual, spoken or written, are directed at a mass audience and not at the industrial users, (i.e., it is found in case of personal selling).

Finally, advertisements are identifiable with their sponsor or originator, which is not always the case with publicity or propaganda.

Robert W. Sarnoff interestingly says that an “Advertising is the foot on the accelerator, the hand on the throttle, the spur on the flank that keeps our economy surging a head”.

Bur Manning JWT flashes it as – “one of the important forces which serve the public interest. It is a form of open communication between those who sell and those who buy. It is a form of advocacy- open to any company or cause that wants to argue its case. The jury is the public. Every purchaser is a vote.”

According to John J. Myers, “Advertising is dissemination of information concerning an idea, service or product to compel the action in accordance with interest of advertiser”.

In the words of Bay and Wheeler , “Advertising is any form of paid, non-personal presentations of ideas, goods and services for the purpose of inducing people to buy them”.

Definitions of Advertising   – Provided by R. H. Colley and William J Stanton

Advertising is a major tool that a company uses to communicate with its target buyers. The communication is about the products and services of the company, the details being presented in a very attractive manner with the intention of selling these to the target customers. Advertising uses several media to communicate with the target customers.

Advertising is absolutely inevitable to sell goods, in the present scenario because of the intense competition. It is only through advertising that a manufacturer can inform the prospective buyers about his products, convince them and make them buy his products.

The word-advertise is a derivation of the Latin term “ad vertere” which means to draw the attention.

“Advertising is paid form of mass communication, the ultimate purpose of which is to impart information, develop attitudes and induce action, beneficial to the advertising in the sale of a product or service.” — R. H. Colley

“Advertising consists of all the activities involved in presenting to an audience a non- personal, sponsor-identified, paid for message about a product or organization.” – William J Stanton

Advertising is the form of paid, non-personal communication conducted to disseminate messages. These messages are usually persuasive in nature and are used to build a brand or create awareness about a product or service, or educate for a social cause. Advertisements are created in different ways as the writer can conceive, be written, modified and injected with every aspect that can appeal to customers.

Points to be kept in mind while developing an advertising programme:

(i) Mission – The objectives of the advertisements should be carefully and neatly framed.

(ii) Money – The budget that needs to be allocated across different media types should be determined.

(iii) Message – The message the company needs to send to the customers.

(iv) Media – The platform of media the company needs to select in order to target the right customers.

(v) Measurement – The Company must have an evaluation technique for the results.

Definitions of Advertising   – As Given by Marketing Experts: R.V. Zacher and William J. Stanton

Advertising is a combination of actions taken in order to draw public attention towards any particular product or service. It is a kind of ‘paid announcement’ which the company creates in order to inform, educate and tempt the public to purchase their products or services.

The word ‘advertising’ has been derived from the Latin term ‘advertere’ which means ‘turn to’ or turning the attention towards the product. Goods are always produced in anticipation of demand. Success of a business depends upon fast sales and repeated orders. Every businessman, therefore, tries to increase the sales. In order to obtain high turnover, business enterprises now use various methods of persuading the people to buy their products.

Advertisement is the art of making yourself and your product known to die world in such a way that a desire for buying that product is created in the hearts of the people. It has been rightly pointed out that in order to fly the aeroplane of sales, advertisement acts as fuel. Advertising in fact, is a salesmanship in print. It is inevitable for increasing the volume of sales.

“Advertising is a means of communicating information pertaining to product or ideas by other than direct personal contact and on an openly paid basis with intent to sell or otherwise obtain favourable consideration.” —R. V. ZACHER

“Advertising consists- of all the activities involved in presenting to a group, a non- personal, oral or visual, openly sponsored message regarding a product, service or idea; this message called an advertisement, is disseminated through one or more media and is paid for by the identified sponsor.” —WILLIAM J. STANTON

Definitions of Advertising by John E Kennedy  

The marketing communication mix consists of five major modes of communication—(i) Advertising, (ii) Sales Promotion, (iii) Public Relations, (iv) Personal Selling and (v) Direct Marketing.

Advertising is one of the functions of marketing. Thus, advertising management is a branch of marketing management, which plays an important role in the realisation of the organisation’s objectives. Through advertising, one can attain short term objectives such as increase in the sales of a product, as well as long term objectives such as bringing behavioural changes in the attitude of the present and prospective customers.

Advertising management is made up of a system of interacting organiza­tions, with advertisers at the core of the system. Advertising management is heavily focused on the analysis, planning, control and decision-making activities of the core institution in achieving the marketing and organisation objectives. However, many other institutions are also involved in the process such as facilitating and control institutions—from advertising agency to research agencies, media, government and the competitors.

The word advertising has its origin from a Latin word ‘Advertise’ which means ‘turns on’. The dictionary meaning of the word is ‘to announce publicly or to give ‘public notice’. In the early days of advertising, people used to advertise simply to announce the availability of goods and services. It was in 1904 that John E. Kennedy dramatically changed the description of advertising to ‘salesmanship in print’.

For the first time, it was clearly stated that the ultimate win of advertising is to sell. “It is not good advertising unless it sells”. It was emphasised that advertising did not just denote thinking up with pictures or writing clear slogans, nor was the purpose of advertising to entertain. It was considered to be a serious business tool with the purpose of assisting the sales of a product.

Every advertiser pays the same tariff for a magazine or TV time. Yet a really good message can sell many times over a poor one. As an advertising professional one is expected to produce high return on investment, readership, action and sales.

According to John E. Kennedy – “Advertising is simply a way of selling something in the most effective method possible. Good advertising creates sales and not just attention”.

Definitions of Advertising   – As Defined by William J. Stanton, J. Thomas Russel and W. Roland Lane

Advertising is a form of communication. It is the presentation of an idea, image, message or information. It is objectively framed, addressing a target group to convey the theme desired to reach the specific objective and goal, designed by the advertiser. The idea behind any advertisement is to influence the target group, to generate interest and to act accordingly.

In other words, it is a process of developing an attitude and induced action, for selling goods or services. Advertisement plays the role of facilitator, to bridge the gap between the advertiser and the target group and to generate the brand image and loyalty.

According to William J. Stanton “Advertising consists of all the activities involved in presenting to a group, a non-personal, oral or visual, openly-sponsored message regarding a product, services or idea, this message is called an advertisement, is disseminated through one or more media and is paid for by an identified sponsor.”

J. Thomas Russel and W. Roland Lane defined advertising as follows:

“Advertising is a message paid for by an identified sponsor and delivered through some medium of mass communication. Advertising is persuasive communication. It is not neutral; it is not unbiased; it says- ‘I am going to sell you a product or an idea.’”

From the above discussions and definitions we may identify ‘advertising’ as:

1. Any paid form,

2. Non-personal presentation and promotion,

3. Sponsored by an identified individual or organisation,

4. The presentation of ideas, messages or information,

5. Communicated through mass media,

6. Developed for generation of awareness,

7. Repeatedly focussed for persuasion and conviction,

8. Generates brand image and brand loyalty.

In marketing there are four major elements known as four P’s. They are – Product, Price, Place (Distribution) and Promotion. The promotional aspects of the marketing activities are concerned with – Advertising; Sales promotion; Personal selling; Public Relations; Publicity etc.

The marketing activities can only be organised successfully, if all the components are integrated and co-ordinated effectively to achieve the organisational objectives.

Advertising is a part of promotional-mix. The other elements are sales promotion, personal selling, public relations and publicity. Any non-personal sponsored commu­nication designed with the objective to influence the buying behaviour is treated as advertising.

Definitions of Advertising   – According to Russel H. Colley, Samuel Johnson, Albert Lasher, Stanley Resor, Leo Burnett, Claude C. Hopkins and David Ogilvy

“Adverting has become the second largest item in our corporate budget. The chips are getting so blue that top management can no longer afford to be uninformed — naive, if you will — about advertising”. — Russel H. Colley

Advertising and promotions are the avenues for the marketers to communicate with the consumers in a meaningful manner. Now a days, with the generation of myriad media outlets, marketers are looking beyond the tradi­tional methods of exposures.

Advertising and promotions are considered fastest growing dynamic and fascinating subject, for the pur­pose of study and practice. It was stated by Samuel Johnson “The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvements.”

The advertising activities encompasses multi-disciplinary aspects, like product at­tributes, knowledge of the market, role of competition, segmenting the market for targeting the audience arid knowledge of media. Consumer’s behavioural pattern, socio­economic and regulatory framework impact of globalisation, changing national and international scenario govern the advertising planning and strategies.

In the field of advertising, the exponents developed different innovative strategies. In 1900, Albert Lasher a pioneer in the field of advertising, owned the renowned adver­tising agency Lord and Thomas. According to him ‘a good advertising person should possess a sense of detail combined with a gift of grasping the big picture, and should have the potential to predict the reactions of consumers.’

Stanley Resor the head of J. Walter Thomson advertising agency, believed that an ideal agency should act ‘University of Advertising’. He hired three professors – a psychologist, an economist and a historian. Another renowned person in the field of that period Raymond Rubicam of Young and Rubicam agency, believed in the research process associated with the creativity in advertising. He inducted Dr. Gallup from North Western University to measure the readership of advertisements. Rubicam used to say, ‘The way we sell is to get read first.’

Leo Burnett , being a pioneer generated immortal campaign for ‘Marlboro’.

His few suggestions regarding creative process are as follows:

“There is an inherent drama in every product. Our No. 1 job is to dig for it and capitalize on it.”

“Steep yourself in your subject, work, like hell, and love, honour and obey your hunches.”

Claude C. Hopkins joined Lord & Thomas as a copy writer, and created famous ad campaigns for Pepsodent, Palmolive etc.

A few of his viewpoints may be cited, as follows:

“In every ad. consider only new customers. People using your product are not going to read your ads.”

“Ad writers forget they are salesmen and try to be performers. Instead of sales, they seek applause.”

“Brief ads are never key ad. Every traced ad tells a complete Story.”

Hopkins perceived the importance of brand images, long before it was actually practiced by the industry. Another exponent in the field, Bill Bernbach developed wonderful ad campaign for Volkswagen. His headline for AVIS car rental company “Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So why go with-us?” proved simply overwhelming. An approach of hard confession generated a strong positive appeal among the audience targeted.

David Ogilvy the founder of Ogilvy & Mather agency believed on creativity in ad­vertising, and generation of ‘Big Ideas’. According to him ‘no idea is big unless it works for atleast 30 years’. He stressed on positioning a product in an exclusive manner to create an impact. In the advertising of ‘DOVE’, he positioned the toilet soap for dry skin, and used a promise which had won the test ‘Dove creams your skin while you bathe’.

Regarding advertising business and profession, he believed in professionalism and considered that specialisation different activities can turn the business to perfection. In his book ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ he expressed the different diversified activities involved in the profession like, the role of ‘Copy-writers’, ‘Art Directors’, ‘Account Executives’, ‘Researchers’ etc.

Analysation and Synthesis of the opinions and views of the scholars, if summed up throw light on the various work fields of advertising agencies.

In India the advertising business took the shape of a professional stream only during 1990s. The growth of the business was recorded around 50% from 1990 to 1995, due to economic boom of the country, liberalisation process and influx of media opportunities. Economic policies opened the opportunities of global entries.

Considering the economic environment, advertising and other promotional strategies have now become the integral part of our social and economic system. The innovation of new technologies have led to the scope of introduction of new media for effective reach and exposure of the messages which in turn is developed by the dynamic marketers.

The developments of the marketing strategies have widened the range and the scope of marketing, to encompass different groups and segments of consumers advertising as a systematic and dynamic process, has generated the interest of the marketers.

Related Articles:

• Shape of the Advertising Cost Curve (With Diagram)
• Advertising: Subject-Matter and Rule of Thumb (With Diagram)
• Effectiveness of Advertisement and Its Evaluation
• Determining an Advertising Budget: 5 Methods

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Conference Presentations

What stands out about a conference presentation?

A conference presentation supplements the discussion of your research with concise points, graphical data, and/or illustrative examples. It is a visual aid for the presentation of research to an audience, and because of that, it must be tailored towards the audience attending the conference. This audience will not always know about your field or subtopic.

How long should a conference presentation be?

A conference presentation should last from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the conference. Check conference guidelines for an idea of what length conference organizers expect the presentation to be. Remember that you should allow time for questions. One should spend around 1-2 minutes per slide. For a 20 minute presentation, the Q & A session should last around 5 minutes.

What should be included in the conference slides?

• First Slide – Title, author(s), affiliations, e-mail address(es). Follow university or research group’s guidelines on how to represent them on the first slide. This may be an institutionally approved logo, color scheme, or template. 
• Purpose – Give the motivation or purpose behind the research. Explain to the audience your data and objectives, or your problem and limitations for theoretical research. 
• Outline – This is an optional step. An outline helps to go over what the presentation will cover beforehand. Outlines can serve to help the audience follow your presentation. Keep this to a single slide. 
• Background Information – Any literature review or knowledge needed for the topic. Presume the audience knows nothing about your topic and you have to orient them. It is helpful to define key terms for your research that will be repeated over the course of the presentation.
• Methods – This will be where you dive into your own research. 
• Results/Analysis – Share the research results with the audience. Remember to keep your audience in mind and shape the presentation to fit their level of familiarity with the field. Do not assume that measurements or other units will be familiar to them. 
• Discussion/Summary – Use this section to discuss your discussion/summary from your paper. Engage the audience and work to convince them of why these results are important and what they say about your topic. 
• Future Work – Another optional slide, this could discuss any future work to be done with the research or new questions that arose from it. 

When giving a conference presentation, do:

• Pace your speech, giving between 1-2 minutes per slide.
• Make eye contact with people in your audience, especially when answering questions.
• Create interest in your topic and draw the audience in; speak enthusiastically.
• Clarify necessary details verbally. 
• Dress appropriately.

Don’t:

• Show the audience your back.
• Read from notecards in your hands at length.
• Present every single detail of your paper/topic.
• Present data without context.
• Apologize for nerves or admit to unpreparedness.

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Presentation Definition: A Comprehensive Guide

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Table of contents, unraveling the presentation definition, what is a presentation, historical roots: from latin to modern day, types and formats of presentations, enhancing presentation skills: a guide, presentation in the digital age: multimedia and keynote, the art of visual aids: graphs and more, presentation in different languages, presentation in literature and culture, effective presentation: tips and techniques, incorporating quizzes and group activities, presentation in educational contexts, synonyms and related terms, the thesaurus and vocabulary expansion, historical and specialized types of presentations, presentation in business: introducing a new product, word of the day: presentation, key points and summarization, cultural influences and adaptations, the role of technology, eye contact and body language, the art of storytelling, innovation and new products, speechify studio.

Unraveling the Presentation DefinitionPresentation - a word frequently used in English, Spanish, Latin, French, and Arabic contexts, but what does it exactly...

Presentation - a word frequently used in English, Spanish, Latin, French, and Arabic contexts, but what does it exactly mean? In this article, we delve into the definition of presentation , exploring its various facets and applications in different fields.

The Essence of Presentation: A Definition

A presentation is the act of presenting information or ideas to a group of people in a structured and deliberate manner, often with the aid of visual aids like PowerPoint, Keynote, or multimedia tools.

Presentations are a ubiquitous part of the professional, educational, and social landscape. The act of presenting, essentially communicating information and ideas to a group of people, has evolved significantly over time. This article explores the definition of a presentation, its various formats, the skills required to make it effective, and the nuances of a great presentation, all while weaving in an eclectic mix of keywords.

The Evolution from 'Praesentātiō' to 'Presentation'

In its essence, a presentation is the act of presenting or displaying information or ideas to an audience. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "the action or process of presenting something to someone." In Latin, the term stems from 'praesentātiō', denoting the action of placing before or showing. This definition has broadened in modern English to encompass various methods of showcasing information, whether it's a business pitch, an academic lecture, or introducing a new product.

The term has its origins in Latin ('praesentātiō'), evolving through various languages like French and British English, symbolizing the act of presenting, displaying, or giving something to others.

Diverse Formats for Different Needs

Presentations can vary in formats - from formal PowerPoint presentations to informal Prez (an informal abbreviation of presentation) discussions, each tailored to suit specific requirements.

Mastering the Art of Presentation

Presentations come in various formats, from the traditional speech to more contemporary multimedia showcases. PowerPoint, a widely used tool, allows the integration of text, images, and graphs to create visually appealing slides. Similarly, Apple's Keynote offers tools for creating impactful multimedia presentations. The inclusion of visual aids, like graphs and charts, enhances comprehension and retention. For those interested in learning Spanish, Arabic, or French, incorporating these languages in presentations can broaden audience reach.

Effective presentation skills involve a blend of clear communication, eye contact , engaging visual aids , and a confident delivery. These skills are crucial in both business and educational settings.

Embracing Technology for Impactful Presentations

In the era of digital communication, tools like multimedia presentations and Apple's Keynote software have become indispensable for creating dynamic and interactive presentations.

Using Graphs and Visuals Effectively

Effective presentations often include graphs and other visual aids to convey complex information in an easily digestible format, enhancing the audience's understanding.

A Multilingual Perspective

The concept of presentation transcends languages, from English to Arabic , each offering unique nuances in the art of presenting.

Presentation Copy and Beyond

The term also appears in literary contexts, such as a "presentation copy" of a book, and in cultural scenarios like a "breech presentation" in childbirth, where the baby is positioned to exit the birth canal feet first.

Crafting an Impactful Presentation

An effective presentation is more than just delivering facts; it involves engaging storytelling, structured key points , and the ability to connect with the audience.

To deliver an effective presentation, certain skills are paramount. English, being a global lingua franca, is often the preferred language for presentations. However, the ability to present in multiple languages, like Spanish or French, can be a significant advantage.

Eye contact is a crucial skill, establishing a connection with the audience and making the presentation more engaging. Additionally, the ability to read the room and adjust the presentation accordingly is vital.

Interactive elements like quizzes can transform a presentation from a monologue into a dynamic group activity. They encourage participation and can be especially effective in educational settings. Quizzes can also be used in business presentations to gauge audience understanding or to introduce a new product.

Learning Through Presentations

In educational settings, presentations are used as a tool for teaching and assessment, often involving quizzes and interactive sessions to enhance learning.

Exploring Synonyms and the Thesaurus

The thesaurus offers a range of synonyms for 'presentation,' such as exhibition, demonstration, and display, each with slightly different connotations.

Utilizing a thesaurus can enrich presentation language, offering synonyms and example sentences to clarify points. The 'word of the day' concept, often found in English learning resources, can be an interesting addition to presentations, especially in multilingual contexts.

The term 'presentation' also has specialized meanings. In historical contexts, a 'presentation copy' refers to a book or manuscript gifted by the author. In obstetrics, 'breech presentation' denotes a situation where the baby is positioned to exit the birth canal feet or buttocks first. Understanding these specialized definitions enriches the overall grasp of the term.

The Role of Presentation in Business

In business contexts, presentations are crucial for scenarios like introducing a new product , persuading investors, or communicating with stakeholders.

Expanding Vocabulary with 'Presentation'

In language learning, 'presentation' can be a word of the day , helping learners understand its usage through example sentences and pronunciation (notated as /ˌprez.ənˈteɪ.ʃən/ in English).

An effective presentation distills complex information into key points, making it easier for the audience to remember the most important takeaways. Summarization skills are critical in achieving this clarity.

The concept of presentations varies across cultures. In Arabic-speaking countries, the style of presentation might differ significantly from that in English-speaking contexts. The benefice of understanding cultural nuances cannot be overstated, as it can significantly impact the effectiveness of a presentation.

Technology, particularly multimedia, plays a pivotal role in modern presentations. From PowerPoint slides to advanced software like Keynote, the use of technology has revolutionized the way information is presented. The integration of videos, sound, and interactive elements makes presentations more engaging and memorable.

In delivering a presentation, non-verbal cues like eye contact and body language are as important as the spoken content. Maintaining eye contact with the audience establishes a connection and keeps them engaged. Similarly, confident body language can convey authority and enthusiasm.

A great presentation often resembles storytelling. It's not just about relaying facts; it's about weaving a narrative that resonates with the audience. This involves understanding the audience's needs and interests and tailoring the content accordingly.

Presentations are often the first introduction of a new product to the market. The effectiveness of these presentations can make or break the product's success. Highlighting the unique features and benefits in a clear, compelling manner is crucial.

The Power of Presentation

Presentations are a powerful tool for communication and education. Whether in a formal business setting or an informal educational environment, mastering the art of presentation can lead to more effective and impactful communication.

1. Oxford English Dictionary

2. Merriam-Webster Thesaurus

3. Apple Keynote User Guide

4. Presentation Techniques in Educational Literature

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## Frequently Asked Questions About Presentations

### What is in a presentation?

A presentation typically includes a combination of spoken words and visual aids such as PowerPoint slides, graphs, or multimedia elements. It's an organized way to convey information or ideas to a group of people.

### What is meant by giving a presentation?

Giving a presentation refers to the act of presenting information or ideas to an audience. This act, known in various languages including English, Spanish, and French as 'presentation' (or 'praesentātiō' in Latin), involves communication skills, visual aids, and sometimes interactive elements like quizzes.

### What makes a good presentation?

A good presentation effectively communicates key points, engages the audience through eye contact and clear speech (often practiced as a 'word of the day' in English classes), uses visual aids like graphs, and is well-structured. Effective presentation skills are crucial for this.

### What are the types of presentation?

There are various types of presentations, including formal business presentations (often using PowerPoint or Keynote), educational lectures, sales pitches for a new product, and informal talks. Each type uses different formats and approaches.

### What are the 4 parts of a presentation?

The four main parts of a presentation are the introduction, the main body, the conclusion, and the Q&A session. Each part plays a vital role in delivering an effective presentation.

### What are the three things that a good presentation should do?

A good presentation should inform, engage, and persuade or inspire the audience. It's about more than just delivering facts; it's an act of communication that can change perspectives or encourage action.

### How is a presentation linked with multimedia?

Presentations often use multimedia elements like videos, audio clips, and animated graphs to enhance the viewer's understanding and engagement. Multimedia tools like PowerPoint and Keynote are widely used in creating dynamic presentations.

### How long should a presentation be?

The length of a presentation can vary, but it's typically between 15 to 30 minutes. The duration depends on the context and the amount of information to be covered. It's important to keep presentations concise to maintain the audience's attention.

These answers incorporate various aspects of presentations, including their definition, formats, and the skills required, in multiple languages and contexts, as seen in resources like Oxford dictionaries and thesaurus.

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Presentation Definition & A Complete Guide For Beginners

Last updated on September 9th, 2023

For many people it might sound like a strange question, however, many beginners still find it a bit confusing to understand what a presentation is. This not only includes students learning about the art of presenting their ideas but also people across various cultures who find the concept alien. For example, if you ask an engineer to give a presentation about an engineering concept or design, he/she might find it difficult to switch gears to public speaking. Similarly, many people who work within a vacuum might suddenly be asked to present something, without having any prior experience of speaking before an audience  or using presentation software like PowerPoint . Let’s take a look at a basic presentation definition, followed by dictionary definitions, with a complete guide for beginners.

What is a Presentation?

A presentation in the context of public speaking can be described as an activity where a presenter presents his/her ideas, explains a process, provides information, or raises questions regarding a subject for public debate. There can be many definitions of a presentation, however, it can be basically narrowed down to the aforementioned.

Presentation Definitions

While there are many definitions of what a presentation is and what it entails, here are a few dictionary definitions about what a presentation is generally considered to be:

An activity in which someone shows, describes, or explains something to a group of people.

Source: Presentation Definition by  Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary

A speech or talk in which a new product, idea, or piece of work is shown and explained to an audience.

Source:   Presentation Definition by Oxford Dictionary

A talk giving information about something.

Source:   Presentation Definition by Cambridge Dictionary

5 Different Types of Presentations

Presentations can be presented for different purposes. Before presenting a presentation, it is necessary that you have a clear idea regarding the purpose of the presentation. Below is an overview of some of the 5 most common types of presentations:

1. Informative

You might need to create an informative presentation to explain important details tied to a topic before an audience. This type of presentation might be brief, with essential information. Such a presentation is usually based on facts and avoids too many complicated details and assumptions.

Examples: Class lectures, research findings, technical information, results from experiments, etc.

2. Persuasive

A persuasive presentation is geared towards convincing the audience to believe a specific point of view. Such a presentation might conclude with a call to action.

Examples: Product demos, sales pitch, investor pitch, presentations on social issues, debates, etc.

3. Instructional

Such a presentation might be to provide an audience with instructions, such as regarding a process, or the use of a product. Such presentations are usually longer, as they require demonstrations and detailed explanation of each aspect of the topic.

Examples: Tutorials for using a software, device or machine, employee orientation presentations, explanation of a course syllabus, etc.

4. Arousing

This type of presentation is meant to make the audience think about a certain topic. This can be to appeal to the intellect and emotions of the audience to point them towards a certain point of view or to start a social debate.

Example: Religious speech, presentation about a taboo, motivational presentation, etc.

5. Decision Making

Some presentations are conducted with the sole aim of providing facts and figures to help the audience reach a decision. This might include a business presentation about say, market share, profits, project revenue and market competition; so that the board members might be able to decide a future course of action for the company.

Examples: Business meetings, presentation about legislation and laws, a SWOT analysis presentation, etc.

3 Different Means of Presenting Presentations

How a presentation is presented can be roughly divided into 3 main categories, i.e. oral, visual only oral and visual.

1. Oral Only

This might simply include a presenter speaking directly to the audience, without any visual aid. This type of presentation can be difficult, since it can be hard to grab audience attention without any visual aid. If you are looking to give an oral presentation, you must have very good presentation skills and a compelling story to tell your audience. In fact, your audience is likely to be more interested in your presentation if you can present your ideas, concepts and explanations like a story.

While it might seem unlikely that someone would resort to an audio only presentation, however, this too can be quite an effective method for creating a sense of mystery of making your audience pay more attention to the content of your presentation. Such a presentation might be presented in the form of a story, read out or played via an audio device.

2. Visual Only

This might include a set of images or a video playing out before an audience. Such a presentation might include slides or a video clip with text that the audience requires to read to understand the visuals, a silent animation with a symbolic message, a set of images played like a slideshow, and the like.

3. Visual & Oral

This is the most common method of presenting a presentation. Whether it is a presenter directly or remotely presenting a presentation, or a video presentation playing out before an audience, the use of both visual and an oral explanation is usually the most effective method for presenting a presentation. Such a presentation may also include background music, and audio effects to make the presentation more compelling.

Other than presentation software, and the use of devices like projectors, monitors and TV screens, visual and oral presentations might also include photographs, whiteboards, and handouts.

Commonly Used Pesentation Software, Platforms & Methods

Here are a few commonly used apps, platforms and methods used by presenters for making presentations.

Slide Decks

Nowadays, most people simply relate the word ‘presentation’ with a slide deck, typically created in PowerPoint. This includes various slides, each with bits of information. These slides are presented one by one, usually starting with a title slide, introduction of the topic, main content, followed by a conclusion. According to some estimates, 30 million PowerPoint presentations are created on a daily basis.

PowerPoint, Keynote , Prezi , and Google Slides are a few of the most famous presentation platforms for designing and presenting slide decks.

Video Presentations

Presentations can also have other forms, such as video presentations. These can include slides converted from PowerPoint to video format , video clips created using web apps like PowToon , YouTube videos, as well as elaborate videos produced using sophisticated video editing and production software.

Interactive Presentations

This type of presentation might include the ability of the audience to interact with the presenter or presentation in some way. For example, the audience might be given the chance to view the slide deck and react to certain parts of the presentation using apps, polls, quizzes, etc. Hence, these type of presentations might include mechanisms where a presenter is able to switch between content using interactive buttons, with some sort of user interaction.

Some platforms for making interactive presentations include; Articulate , Mindomo , Office Mix , etc. Also see out post about interactive audience response systems .

Beyond the digital sense, interactive presentations might include something as simple as a class lecture with student participation, or a presentation where the audience is actively engaged to work with the presenter in some way.

Webinars & Online Presentations

Online presentations and webinars usually include Live presentations presented using various internet based platforms. While many people also share their presentations online for universal viewing, using services like SlideShare, SlideOnline and AuthorStream, usually, the word online presentations is used for Live presentations presented remotely using the Internet. These may or may not include visual aid, however, usually presenters opt for PowerPoint slides presented via a number of remote meeting and  conferencing apps like Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom , Join.me , TeamViewer, and the like.

Related: Also see our post about best screens sharing solutions for presenters .

Other than apps, some presenters might choose to go old school and use paper handouts, with an oral speech or discussion to present a presentation. This method is most likely to be used by teachers, such as when handing out an assignment where students might have to make use of the handouts to draw conclusions.

It is also worth mentioning here that some presenters like giving their audience handouts for their PowerPoint presentations so the audience can follow their slides more conveniently. These handouts might be distributed in the form of printed or digital handouts. You can learn more about the latter from our posts about digital handouts .

Whiteboards and Interactive Whiteboards

This too is a method most likely to be used by educators to teach students using either a real whiteboard or a digital one. The presenter might use a marker to draw diagrams, or write down points and explanations on the whiteboard to explain the topic.

There are also interactive whiteboards and apps which can aid audience participation and interactivity. Some examples include; Deekit , RealTime Board , and digital whiteboard devices.

The image below shows an interactive whiteboard by Smart Tech. This range of boards developed by Smart tech are called Smart Boards .

Live Demonstration

This method is most likely to be used for a sales presentation to show the utility of a product. Such presentations are common during promotional events organized by different companies, and governments (to promote businesses); such as Expo events. Live demos have also been one of the most commonly used methods for selling products by door to door salesmen.

The presentation definitions, types, methods, apps and devices mentioned in this post includes some common examples of how and why presentations are presented. If you’re a newbie looking to give a killer presentation at Office or school and find the above mentioned too overwhelming; we would simply recommend that you use PowerPoint for making slides to present before your audience.

You can pick a template from these thousands of free PowerPoint templates to choose the one most relevant for your topic, create a slide deck, and rehearse the presentation beforehand.

About Farshad

IT professional, communications specialist and Blogger!

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Definition of presentation noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

presentation

• presentation on/about somebody/something The sales manager will give a presentation on the new products.
• Several speakers will be making short presentations .
• The conference will begin with a keynote presentation by a leading industry figure.
• a slide/video/multimedia presentation
• presentation on

Definitions on the go

Look up any word in the dictionary offline, anytime, anywhere with the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary app.

Encore vs. Original Presentations: Black, White, and Shades of Gray

Aug 13, 2018 | News and Trends

Ellen Baum, PhD, and Harry Ma, PhD,  Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson

After an “Original” abstract and its corresponding poster have been presented at a scientific or medical congress, publication professionals sometimes face challenges when preparing subsequent “Encore” presentations, and the way forward may not always be obvious. For example, will updates in the Introduction/Background section due to different word count and/or formatting requirements of the “Encore” congress make an abstract “not an encore?” Will these changes require approval by all authors, or just the corresponding author? And if the Original abstract of Congress A is due before Congress B, but presentation of poster B occurs before A, which is the Encore, A or B? Perhaps most importantly, is there an alternative if the target congress does not accept Encores? This article examines available definitions of Encore presentations and discusses some “real world” Encore scenarios and potential ways to handle them.

Original and Encore Presentations: Definitions, Guidelines, and an ISMPP Survey

Not to overstate the obvious, but “Encore” in this context refers to submitting the same data (abstract or poster; Encore oral presentations are relatively rare compared to posters and are not discussed in this article) to a congress after the initial presentation of the Original at an earlier congress (see Table 1 below). Usually the data would be “reproduced exactly” except for minor changes to meet the congress’ specific requirements, such as word count, formatting, translation, and author order. 1

Table 1. Presentation Types

Good Publication Practice-3 (GPP3) 2 addresses the topic of Encores only briefly. Encores are permitted provided that: (i) the congress permits it; (ii) copyright requirements are respected; (iii) prior presentations are disclosed; and (iv) repeated presentation is to reach a different audience. In addition, an Encore presentation usually has the same authors as the Original; GPP3 includes an exception to enable presentation in a local language when presentation by a nonauthor is not permitted and provided that all Original authors agree.

In a 2013 survey among ISMPP members (195 participants), Panayi et al. 3 examined respondents’ views on Encore presentations (GPP2 was the latest version at that time). Most respondents (71%) agreed that Encore abstracts should be presented “in moderation;” valid reasons for Encore presentations included “different geography” (95%) or “different specialty” (94%). Strikingly, 78% of respondents wanted more guidance on Encores from publication or medical writing professional organizations.

What If a Target Congress Does Not Allow Encore Presentations?

If a target congress does not accept Encore presentations, but there are sufficient reasons (eg, new audience, new geography, etc.) to present the information at that congress, many publication professionals have used a third option that is neither an Encore nor an Original abstract/poster and is known as an “Adaptation” 4 or “Repurposed.” 1 The content of an Adapted or Repurposed presentation overlaps with the Original but contains new/additional data, analyses, and/or interpretations; therefore, authorship can change relative to the Original. 1, 4 By this definition, addition of a new figure or table, for example, would make the Original presentation into an Adaptation/Repurposed, rather than an Encore.

Whereas Original vs. Encore definitions should be clear cut (that is, initial vs. subsequent presentations), the actual requirements to turn an Original into an Adapted/Repurposed abstract and poster fall into what can be considered a “gray area.” Guidance on this topic from professional organizations has been scarce, and it is not addressed in GPP3. A recent preprint on Good Practice for Conference Abstracts and Presentations: GP-CAP included information on encore abstracts and presentations but did not specifically address Adapted/Repurposed abstracts and posters; publication of GP-CAP is pending. 5

Copyright Considerations

In the case of abstract copyright, it is not a question of whether Congress B (occurring after Congress A) allows Encore presentations; rather, copyright ownership by Congress A could prevent an Encore at Congress B.

GPP3 points out the need to respect copyright requirements. 2 According to the survey by Panayi et al., 3 only 57% of respondents considered the potential copyright of the Original abstract when preparing an Encore abstract. In some cases, authors must transfer copyright to the congress, and it is increasingly common for congresses to publish abstracts in a journal without mentioning copyright transfer.

Congress policies on abstract copyright vary widely; some examples are shown in Table 2 below. A Google search for “(conference OR congress) AND abstract AND copyright” revealed three main types of congress copyright policies:

(i) authors retain copyright (eg, IAC and EADV, Table 2), implying that Encores are permitted at subsequent congresses;

(ii) congress retains copyright (eg, ASH and ASCO, Table 2), indicating that Encores are not permitted; and

(iii) congress retains copyright but suggests that authors contact the congress for permission to re-use (eg, CROI and EHA, Table 2).

For types (ii) and (iii), it is possible that Adaptation/Repurposing as discussed above for Encore abstracts might allow authors to present at subsequent Congress B, despite copyright by Congress A, with Congress A’s permission. It is expected that there would be a corresponding addition of new data, analyses, and/or interpretations to the poster, to accurately reflect the Adapted/Repurposed abstract. Alternatively, substantial rewriting of the abstract might avoid infringing on Congress A’s abstract copyright but allow the essentially identical poster to be presented at Congress B.

  Table 2. Examples of Congress Policies on Copyright Regarding Subsequent Encore Abstracts

Many congress websites do not state a copyright policy, so it is likely that authors retain copyright in those cases. However, if Congress A publishes the abstract without explicitly requiring copyright transfer, it is possible that authors cannot submit the essentially identical abstract to subsequent Congress B. When in doubt, the prudent policy is to contact Congress A to inquire about re-use of the abstract.

What about poster copyright?  In many cases, posters are a “prelude” to developing a manuscript, and it would appear to be counterproductive to prevent authors from re-using their poster content, especially figures and tables. Moreover, unlike abstracts, posters are usually not subject to peer review and not regarded as durable, citable publications. In fact, poster copyright transfer appears to be quite rare: for approximately 75 congresses (comprising oncology, neuroscience, infectious disease, and vaccine therapeutic areas) at which Janssen’s authors presented posters, the publications team found no instance of a requirement to transfer poster copyright to the congress. One extremely rare example found online is the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), 12 which states, “The Academy holds copyright on all material presented at the Academy’s annual meeting until and unless such material is found unsuitable for publication in Ophthalmology . Should an author wish to publish his or her material elsewhere, it may not be submitted for consideration until Ophthalmology has released the presenter from any copyright obligations.” The motivation for this policy is evidently to steer the manuscript derived from the poster to the AAO journal, but it would also effectively prevent Encores or Adapted/Repurposed presentations.

Author Approvals on Abstracts, including “Encore Switching”

Implicit in GPP3 guidelines is that ICMJE authorship requirements are mandatory for Original abstracts and Original posters and include author submission signoff. 2 Companies may have their own policies regarding authors’ approval/signoff process for Encores. For example, Janssen’s policy on Encore presentations is that although all authors must be notified of Encore abstracts/posters, only the corresponding author must formally approve Encore submissions in our documentation system. For a Repurposed/Adapted abstract and poster, which is considered “not an Encore,” Janssen’s policy is that all authors must review and approve.

In the situation where Congress A occurs before Congress B, but Abstract A is due after Abstract B, there is a switch of Original and Encore. Abstract B is the Original abstract, but Poster A is the Original poster; they are treated accordingly by Janssen for author signoff (all authors for Original; only corresponding author for Encore).

The definition of Original (initial submission to Congress A) vs. Encore abstract (essentially identical submission to subsequent Congress B) is clear cut. If Congress B does not accept Encores, or if Congress A requires abstract copyright transfer, then it is necessary to explore whether “the gray area” — transforming the Original into an Adapted or Repurposed abstract — is permissible. When in doubt, contact Congress A and/or B as applicable. Finally, as expressed by ISMPP survey respondents, 3 guidance on Encores from publication/medical writing professional organizations – but expanded to include the “gray area” discussed herein – would be helpful in elucidating the way forward.

Disclaimer: The ideas presented are those of the authors and not their employer, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

• Ganesan, B. (2014). A Practical Approach to Encores in the Asia-Pacific Region. http://www.ismpp.org/assets/docs/Education/ISMPPU/APAC/apet%20oct%2029%20-%20final.pdf Accessed 11Jun2018.
• Battisti, W. et al. (2015). Good Publication Practice for Communicating Company-Sponsored Medical Research: GPP3. Ann Intern Med. 163:461-464.
• Panayi, A.E. et al. (2014). A Survey of Current Practices in Encore Abstract Submissions from Industry-Sponsored Study Data. http://www.ismpp.org/assets/docs/Education/EuropeanMeeting/2014EM/GeneralSessionPresentations/oral%20presentations.pdf Accessed 11Jun2018.
• Reed, D.M. et al. (2013). Developing an Encore Abstract Process that Complies with GPP. https://ismpp.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/Education/ISMPPU/2013/ismppu_globalpubplanning_5%2022%2013_final.pdf Accessed 11Jun2018.
• Foster C. et al. (2017). Good Practice for Conference Abstracts and Presentations: GP-CAP. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3356v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3356v1
• https://am.asco.org/abstracts/abstract-policies-exceptions Accessed 14Jun2018.
• http://www.hematology.org/Annual-Meeting/Abstracts/2853.aspx Accessed 14Jun2018.
• http://www.croiconference.org/abstract-guidelines Accessed 14Jun2018.
• https://eadvgeneva2017.org/scientific-information/call-for-abstracts/online-poster-service/ Accessed 14Jun2018.
• https://ehaweb.org/assets/Pages/Congress/EHA23-Abstract-Submission-Terms-Conditions-January-2018.pdf Accessed 14Jun2018.
• https://www.aids2018.org/Programme/Abstracts/Submission-guidelines Accessed 14Jun2018.
• https://www.aao.org/annual-meeting/presenter/submission-policies Accessed 14Jun2018.

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