The Wrong Way To Include Jokes In Presentations

Using a joke or an amusing quote in a presentation can be a great way to win over your audience. However, there’s a sure-fire way to ruin your attempts at comedy: putting the text of the joke on a slide and displaying it before you’ve actually said it.

Clown picture from Shutterstock

This happened repeatedly in a presentation I attended recently. The presenter had carefully hunted down a stack of relevant quotes, many of which included a punchline. But because they all appeared on screen well before he ever said them, we’d all read them in advance. Any impact from actually speaking these words was lost.

This is a specific case for one of the most basic rules of presenting: don’t just read what’s on your slides. Ideally, don’t put the quote up on screen at all: use a relevant picture instead and save the comment itself as a surprise. If you do want to display your selectively-pilfered shard of wit, don’t bring it up on screen until after you’ve said it — and don’t provide handouts either.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments