Chicago-Style Deep-Dish PowerPoint
You know about Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, right? It’s not just a pizza; it’s an experience with its thick crust, high sides, epic amount of sauce, cheese, and pantry-full of toppings. Well, guess what: pizza isn’t the only thing that comes in Chicago style.
Now, if you’re an editor or similar word worker, the words “Chicago style” may well first suggest the famous guide to text style, beloved by academics and publishers. That would seem to be a very different kind of Chicago Style – substantial, sure, and sometimes crusty, but not especially saucy, and never cheesy. But guess what: sometimes the two Chicago styles really do apply in the same place. And one of them is PowerPoint.
Sorry if you just spit your coffee there. But bear with us! Imagine the stereotypical PowerPoint presentation as a thin-crust pizza: a single layer of information, not much substance, with cheesy graphics. In contrast, a Chicago-style PowerPoint is rich with information, has plenty to digest, and you may even need to take it home to get back to later on. And this is the kind of PowerPoint where The Chicago Manual of Style really comes in handy, giving guidance on the presentation and formatting of information.
Which is one reason it’s great that PerfectIt now brings the power of The Chicago Manual of Style to PowerPoint. It’s like quality control in the kitchen, but on your slides, not your pies. Let’s have a look at the different parts of a Chicago-style PowerPoint – and how PerfectIt will help you make it both delicious and nutritious.
The crust
The crust of your presentation is the basic mechanics of language. Your presentation rests on the clarity, readability, and consistency of your text. It holds everything together. If the mechanics aren’t sold, the contents don’t get delivered; they just dribble away and fall on the floor. If you really want to make a good impression, your crust can’t be just good enough. It should be great.
Chicago-style crusts are known for quality control, and The Chicago Manual of Style is famous for its clear and detailed guidance on the mechanics of prose. If you’re not sure how to punctuate or capitalize something, you can just look it up – or, in many cases, have PerfectIt check it for you, right in your document. This includes correctness and consistency in:
Spelling: For example American-style, consistent with your chosen dictionary – and PerfectIt will catch things your spell checker won’t, such as typos that make other real words.
Punctuation: Chicago’s hyphenation guide is famous, and PerfectIt will check your hyphens against it. Chicago also sets clear standards for apostrophes, dashes, slashes, parentheses, quotation marks, and the placement of other punctuation relative to them.
Capitalization: Chicago’s guidance on capitalization is a whole graduate-level course in itself, and, yes, PerfectIt’s checks follow it.
Numbers: Digits or spelled out, how many decimal places, where to use commas and spaces … Chicago can answer your questions.
Grammar: Chicago even has a whole chapter on grammar by Bryan A. Garner, author of Garner’s Modern English Usage.
Formatting: You need to have clear, consistent, measured, and intentional use of bolding and italics.
The sauce
The sauce is the organization of your presentation. It connects and touches everything, ensuring your presentation flows well. And you need the right amount. Too little, and your presentation is dry and hard to get through. Too much, and it drowns everything and makes a mess. Here are a few things to watch for in organizing your presentation:
How many slides? Many people use PowerPoints for documents, such as reports and proposals. In this case, the number of slides can be hundreds. And this is where PerfectIt is especially powerful. If it’s for a live presentation, however, we recommend not more than one per minute. Even for a really meaty presentation, too much is too much. The larger part of your presentation is what you’re saying aloud to your audience, not what they’re reading off the screen.
How much info per slide? Again, reports and proposals are different, but in presentations, common counsel is no more than six bullet points, and no more than six words per bullet. The rest is information that you’re saying out loud and including in your accessory materials, otherwise your sauce gets sludgy.
What order are the slides in? Ah, here’s the real secret of the sauce. Don’t just put them in the order they came to you, and don’t necessarily put them in the order that makes logical or taxonomic sense, either. Good sauce keeps people wanting more. Tell a story. Present questions that lead to other questions; every time you answer a question, there should still be another question that needs to be answered until the very end.
How do you handle the transitions between slides? Here’s a tip: keep it simple. Using all those swirly whirling spinning effects is like dumping sugar and spices into your pizza sauce. Your audience may end up feeling queasy. And remember, the fancy effects may not be as appealing in a take-home form.
The toppings
The toppings are the meat and vegetables – literally for a pizza, and figuratively for a presentation. And, as with pizza toppings, you need to make sure they go together, and that they’re to the taste of your audience. Some people like pineapple on pizza and some don’t, but even those who like it probably don’t want it with pepperoni and olives. Likewise, some people appreciate cartoons and memes in presentations, and some don’t, but even those who like them probably don’t want to see them in a report on infectious disease mortality rates. And too many kinds of content can make a presentation frankly exhausting –most people can’t get through all of a fully loaded pizza, and they may feel gross for trying. A good deep-dish PowerPoint has lots of content, but it still uses it judiciously, with each kind used thoughtfully for full effect.
Here are some of the topping options for your Chicago-style PowerPoint:
Headings: People don’t always think about these, but they’re important. They tell your audience what the point of the slide is. And they should be formatted well, including appropriate and consistent capitalization – Chicago and PerfectIt can help you with that.
Bullet points: The ever-popular way of presenting facts in quick bites – in fact, it’s PowerPoint’s default formatting. But that doesn’t mean you have to use them any more than you have to use pepperoni in pizza. Sometimes information is better conveyed in other ways (which we’re coming to). And when you do use them, you need to make sure you use them well: keep all items in a list grammatically parallel, with the same kind of information and the same punctuation. Chicago and PerfectIt can help you on the mechanics.
Paragraphs: Yes, you can use whole paragraphs of text, if you’re presenting an important quotation. This is a meaty, detailed presentation ingredient for intellectually engaged people – it may not be the best thing for a boardroom full of impatient middle-managers. And when you do use paragraphs, make sure that they adhere to the best standards of Chicago Style.
Tables: Tables can convey some kinds of information very effectively. But remember: if it’s for a presentation, make your tables no more than four columns and six rows, with type that can be seen from the back of the room. And make sure that it’s information that really should be in a chart: a lookup of two criteria, such that each item in a row corresponds to the other items in the same row, differing only by the value of the column. Consider carefully; if you don’t have a one-to-one correspondence of items for each row and each column, you may just want a two-column slide with bullet lists. If you do use a table, Chicago has guidance, and PerfectIt can check your tables to help make sure they follow it.
Charts: When you’re presenting quantitative information, charts and graphs can convey a lot very quickly and effectively. But don’t overload! Again, if your PowerPoint is for a presentation and it can’t be read from the back of a room and understood in seconds, it’s too much.
Diagrams: Diagrams can also be great ways to present information visually – processes, relations, and organizations. But the same warning goes for them as for charts and text: if you’re presenting and your audience can’t make sense of it in seconds, it’s too much. If you put an incredibly complex diagram on a slide, all you’re conveying is that it’s incredibly complex. The exception is if it’s something that the audience is very familiar with, and you’re just highlighting a key bit. In that case, make sure that the highlighted bit jumps out immediately, using arrows, circles, or even a little animation (just a little, though).
Videos: Videos are the dangerous ingredients of this pizza – the hot peppers, let’s say. If they go right, they can work really well, but if they go wrong, they can go badly wrong. Technical difficulties are something you don’t want to encounter mid-presentation. Nor do you want your audience members to be shouting, “What? I can’t hear anything!”
Photos: Photos of the things you’re talking about can be very effective, especially if they’re easy to take in at a glance. Photos of cute or funny things you think will make your point wittily can sometimes be effective, but that shades into the land of cartoons and memes.
Cartoons and memes: Funny visuals are the pineapple of PowerPoint. Like we said, some people like it and some really, really don’t.
The cheese
The cheese is your references. Why? Well, not all presentations have references, and not all pizzas have cheese – but cheese is satisfying, and so are references. Good references show you’ve done your work, and they help other people to use your work. Also, the cheese is added last, and the references typically come last (at the end, or at the bottom of the slide). And you need to have the right kind of cheese, and you need the right reference style.
While PerfectIt can’t help you with references (yet), Chicago is renowned for its reference guidelines. They are both the cause and the relief of stress: the cause because they can seem so exacting, and the relief because pretty much every decision you could have to make has been made for you (“What kind of cheese should I use?!” “Mozzarella. Next question?”). And anyway, you can always make variations on them, just like you can decide what kind of mozzarella to use.
Speaking of which, do you remember a time when your favorite pizza place switched to a slightly lower-fat mozzarella? At first it didn’t seem quite right, but you had to admit that a little less grease was better. Well, guess what: the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style gets rid of the requirement for city of publication in citations. Suddenly the pizza is just a bit less heavy, and you have to admit that it always could have been.
References can seem like a lot of extra work, especially to format them well, but remember: The point of references is so that your audience can follow your information further. If you just put “Smith 2015” that’s pretty much useless, like a single shred of cheese. It needs to be enough that they can find, confirm, and follow what you’re referring to. And then, in turn, they can cite you – yes, Chicago has clear guidance on how to cite presentations, too.
Time to dine!
We’re not sure about you, but we’re really hungry now. Hungry for some deep-dish pizza, but also hungry to try out PerfectIt’s Chicago Style module on PowerPoint. If you already have PerfectIt, here’s how to get it going in PowerPoint. If you don’t have PerfectIt yet, here’s how to download a free trial.