Writing Your Presentation

Before you write your presentation, you should already have started to prepare by
developing your ideas and selecting the main points to include.
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You should structure your presentation with an introduction, the main

message or content, and a conclusion.
You should also aim to write a story that has maximum impact and one which conveys your
message in a way that is easily understood by the target audience.
The structure and content of your presentation will be unique to you and only you can
decide on the best way to present your messages. However, you might like to consider
some standard presentation structures for inspiration.

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What, Why, How?

You could try structuring your presentation by addressing the questions
What?, Why? and How? to communicate your message to the
audience.
What? identifies the key message you wish to communicate. From the perspective of the
audience, think about what is the benefit of your message. What will they gain, what can
they do with the information, and what will the benefit be?
Why? addresses the next obvious question that arises in the audience. Having been told
what, the audience will naturally then start to think why should I do that?, why should I
think that? or why should that be the case? Directly addressing the why? question in
the next stage of your presentation means that you are answering these questions and your

talk is following what the audience perceives as a natural route through the material. The
result is that you have the audience on your side immediately.
How? is also the next question that naturally arises in the audiences mind: how are they
going to achieve what you have just suggested. Try not to be too prescriptive here so,
instead of telling people exactly how they should act on your message, offer suggestions as
to how they can act.

You should also finish by proving what you have just said: providing
evidence that what you have just said is beyond dispute using either
case studies, personal examples or statistics.

Editing Your Content

Once you have a first draft of your presentation, it is important to review and edit this.
Ideally, you should take a break from the presentation before editing so that you can look at
your writing with a fresh pair of eyes.

When editing presentation content, you should consider the following:

1.

Ensure that the language you use is appropriate for the audience. Are there any
terms they may not be familiar with? If so use more familiar terms or explain the
meaning.

2.

Is your language presentation friendly? Presentations are spoken and so choose to

use accessible and easily-understood words (such as those you would use in a
conversation) rather than technical or obscure words.

3.

Eliminate long sentences. Remember that you will be talking through your ideas and
that the audience will be listening rather than reading. Therefore keep sentences short,
and their structure, simple to ease the audiences understanding.

4.
5.

Use metaphors to aid understanding and retention.

Identify ways of grabbing the audiences attention. Are there additional visual
materials that you could include to illustrate your key points?

6.

Check, and double check, that any presentation slides or illustrations, titles, captions,
handouts or similar are free from spelling mistakes.

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How to Write an Introduction for a

Presentation
By Marty Brounstein and Malcolm Kushner from Giving a Presentation In
a Day For Dummies

1 of 5

Developing an organized presentation starts with your introduction. The

introduction opens your speech. The common way in which many presenters
start their talks "My name is . . ." or "Today I'm going to talk to you
about . . ." is not much of an introduction. The purpose of a good
introduction in a formal presentation is to achieve three goals:

Grasp the audience's attention.

Identify the topic and the purpose or core message of the talk.

Provide a brief overview or agenda of what you will cover in the talk.

Speakers often overlook the part about grasping the audience's attention.
They just start talking without creating any interest for the audience to want to
listen. The key point to keep in mind here is that if you don't grab your group's
attention up front, you may not have it for the rest of your presentation.
Following are some useful opening techniques that gain the audience's
attention in a positive way:

Quote someone else. A quote is a line said by someone else that helps
set up what you're going to talk about. When using a quote, you want to
accomplish two things: Cite the source of the line and tie the quote to your
topic.
Here's an example that a company president might use to talk about major
changes happening within the organization: "'The only thing we have to
fear is fear itself.' These were the words spoken by President Franklin
Roosevelt to calm the nation during the trying times of the Great
Depression. This is a message I want all of you to remember as we deal
with what feels like trying times with the organizational changes that I will
talk to you about today."

Tell a joke. A touch of humor in good taste is a great way to break the
ice with an audience; that is, to ease the tension and relax everyone. The
key, as with a quote, is that the joke must be tied to the topic you're going
to talk about. Otherwise, it serves as a distraction and can turn an
audience off regardless of its humor.
If you're not comfortable as a joke teller, go with another introduction
technique. There's nothing worse than watching someone fumble in trying
to tell a joke.

Share a story. A short story with the emphasis on short is another

clever way to kick off a presentation. To work, the story needs to make a
point or contain a message that you can tie to the talk that follows.

Make a bold statement. This technique involves a brief, thoughtprovoking statement that sets up your topic. If you say it with a strong
voice, it commands attention and gets the group ready to hear what will
follow.
Here's an example: "Keep this in mind: Service in your jobs is far more
than what you do. More important is how you do it."

Get the audience to participate. With this technique, you start your
presentation by having the audience do something, from a brief exercise

to responding to questions. This technique gets people's energy levels up.

However, don't choose an activity that creates such a ruckus that getting
the audience to focus back on you becomes difficult. Manage with care.

Ask a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is a thought-provoking

question that you ask the audience but don't expect them to answer out
loud. When you ask the question, you want to answer it either within your
introduction or a short time later in your talk. Otherwise, the question
serves only to confuse people.
Here's an example for a talk on customer focus-group findings: "If you
were a customer doing business with your company, what would most
frustrate you in this effort? As I share my findings from the customer focus
groups, I'm going to tell you what these frustrations are and what you can
do to address them to increase the quality of the service you provide."

State noteworthy facts. With this type of introduction, you provide the
audience with some interesting statistics or other facts that stimulate
thinking and help set up your presentation. This technique works well
when the facts you report are not common knowledge yet are relevant and
stimulating. Just be sure to keep the statement brief so that you don't
clutter your opening with too many easy-to-forget details.

Make a list. This introduction involves using a short list of at least three
items that have something in common. It usually works best to say the list
and then state what the items or people have in common with one
another.
Here's an example: "Joe Davis, Sue McGee, and Jose Martinez are three
people you all know well in this department. They are also three
individuals who have used the communication techniques I'm going to tell
you about today and have seen their success double in the last year."

Give an interesting example. In this technique, you start with a

demonstration, showing something or describing a situation that illustrates
what your topic, and especially its core message, is about. To be effective,

the example must be relevant and fairly brief. The example isn't the actual
talk, but it sets up the presentation that will follow. A good example of this
technique is the showing of before-and-after pictures from the use of a
product or service.
As you prepare your introduction, carefully plan the opening technique you
want to use to grab the audience's attention. Whether you start with this
technique or with the component identifying your topic briefly doesn't matter.
Just go with what works. Then follow these two components with a quick
overview of what's to come to get your talk off to a strong start.

Writing a presentation
When writing up a speech, you should organise your ideas in the same way you would for a
report or essay; have an introduction, a body and a conclusion and pay attention to clear
and logical progression of ideas.

Introduction (which may be written last)

You could capture your listeners attention by beginning with a question,

a funny story, a startling comment, statistic or fact: anything that will
make them think.
State your purpose clearly . You could say, Im going to talk about....
However, thats a little vague. Youll be particularly impressive if you can
be more specific about your intention. Return to the planning notes
discussed above for ideas:
Today I will inform you about
In this presentation I will explain the
This morning I will illustrate the complexity of

Present an outline of your talk, using signpost phrases:

I will concentrate on the following points..

First of all
Then
This will lead to
And finally

Body

Present your main points one by one in logical order. Make it absolutely
clear when you move to new point:
The next point is ...
OK, now I am going to discuss ...
Right. Now I'd like to explain ...
Of course, we must not forget that ...
However, it's important to realise that...

Conclusion

Leave your audience with a clear summary of everything you have

covered, using phrases like:
To sum up...
So, in conclusion...
OK, to recap the main points

Dont let the talk just fizzle out. Make it obvious that you have reached
the end of the presentation. You could restate the purpose of your talk

and show that you have achieved your aim by recapping your evidence
and using one of the following phrases:
I think you can now see that...
My intention was ..., and it should now be clear that ...

Make sure you thank the audience and be ready to get the discussion
going after your presentation. Invite questions, and in case nobody has
anything to say, have some provocative questions or points for
discussion ready to ask the group.
As well as writing an introduction, body and conclusion, there are
additional things to consider when writing an oral presentation:
Use cue cards or slides rather than A4 paper
Rather than writing a long script that you read out to your audience, divide your draft into a number of points that you can
summarise neatly and write on overheads and/or small cards. That way, you will not block yourself off from the audience
with large A4 sheets in front of your face or body. Youll be able to hold small cards or read from slides. If you are standing
behind a lectern, however, then a couple of sheets of A4 with large-print dot points can work well.
Think about time
When writing up each point, think about the length of time you have to talk. Read out each point as you develop it so you
know that youre on track for time. Remember to consider any pauses you might want to take, pictures you may show or
questions you may ask when youre allocating time. When youve finished writing, rehearse your presentation and get its
length right. Ask a friend to listen and time you.
Watch your language
A presentation requires slightly different language than an essay or report because the aim is verbal communication. Keep
sentences simple. Only use big words when they are appropriate for the content or topic; the aim is to communicate, not to
show off your vocabulary.
Emphasise the key points
Make sure people realise what ideas are the important ones. Perhaps repeat them in a different way, using alternate
phrasing to help listeners understand.

Get your pronunciation right

Check the pronunciation of difficult, unusual, or foreign words beforehand so you dont stumble when youre in the middle
of the speech.