Entering Text
No presentation is complete without a word or two at least, which is why the first thing you see when you add a new slide to a presentation are the words "Click to add text." As soon as you "click here," those words of instruction disappear, and you are free to enter a title or text of your own. Most slides include a text placeholder frame at the top for entering a slide title, many slides also have another, larger text placeholder frame for entering a bulleted list.
The easiest way to enter text on slides is to click in a text placeholder frame and start typing. The other way is to switch to Normal view, select the Outline tab in the Slides pane, and enter text there. Text that you type next to a slide icon in the Outline pane is then made the title of the slide.
Enter text on slides the same way you enter text in a Word document - by wiggling your fingers over the keyboard. While you are at it, you can change fonts, the font size of text, and the color of text, as the following pages explain.
Choosing Fonts for Text
If you are not happy with the fonts in your presentation, you have three ways to remedy the problem:
Dig in and choose new fonts on a slide-by-slide basis.
Select the text, go to the Home tab, and choose a font from the Font drop-down list or the Font dialog box. You can also choose fonts on the Mini Toolbar.
Select new theme fonts for your presentation.
Theme fonts are combinations of fonts that the designers of PowerPoint themes deem appropriate for the theme you are working in. To change theme fonts, go to the Design tab, click the Theme Fonts button, and select a new font combination.
Choose a new font on a master slide to change fonts throughout your presentation.
In Slide Master view, select a master slide and change its fonts on the Edit Master tab.
Changing the font size of text
For someone in the back row of an audience to be able to read text in a PowerPoint presentation, the text should be no smaller than 28 points. Try this simple test to see whether text in your presentation is large enough to read: Stand five or so feet from your computer and see whether you can read the text. If you cannot read it, make it larger.
Go to the Home tab and click in or select the text whose size you want to change. Then use one of these techniques to change font sizes:
Font Size drop-down list:
Open this list and choose a point size. To choose a point size that is not on the list, click in the Font Size text box, enter a point size, and press Enter.
Font dialog box:
Click the Font group button to open the Font dialog box. Then either choose a point size from the Size drop-down list or enter a point size in the Size text box and click OK.
Increase Font Size and Decrease Font Size buttons:
Click these buttons ( or press Ctrl+] or Ctrl+[ ) to increase or decrease the point size by the next interval on the Font Size drop-down list. Watch the Font Size list or your text and note how the text changes size. This is an excellent technique when you want to "eyeball it" and you do not care to fool with the Font Size list or Font dialog box.
Changing the color of text
Before you change the color of text, peer into your computer screen and examine the background theme or color you selected for your slides. Unless the color of the text is different from the theme or color, the audience cannot read the text. Besides choosing a color that contributes to the overall tone of the presentation, select a color that is easy to read. Select the text that needs touching up and then use one of these techniques to change the color of text:
- On the Mini Toolbar, open the drop-down list on the Font Color button and choose a color.
- On the Home tab, open the drop-down list on the Font Color button and choose a color.
- On the Home tab, click the Font group button to open the Font dialog box, click the Font Color button in the dialog box, and choose a color on the drop-down list.
The Font Color drop-down list offers theme colors and standard colors. You are well advised to choose a theme color. These colors jive with the theme you choose for your presentation.
Fixing a Top-heavy Title
In typesetting terminology, a top-heavy titleis a title in which the first line is much longer than the second. Whenever a title extends to two lines, it runs the risk of being top-heavy. Unsightly topheavy titles look especially bad on PowerPoint slides, where text is blown up to 40 points or more. To fix a top-heavy title, click where you prefer the lines to break and then press Shift+Enter. Pressing Shift+Enter creates a hard line break,a forced break at the end of one line. (To remove a hard line break, click where the break occurs and then press the Delete key.)
The only drawback of hard line breaks is remembering where you made them. In effect, the line breaks are invisible. When you edit a title with a line break, the line break remains, and unless you know it is there, you discover the line breaking in an odd place. The moral is: If you are editing a title and the text keeps moving to the next line, you may have entered a hard line break and forgotten about it.
