A good slide has few words, and that is hard to do

The most common mistake in a deck is putting the whole talk on the slides. It feels safe, everything is there, nothing is forgotten. But a slide full of sentences competes with you. The room reads instead of listening, and the words on screen win because they are right there.

The slide is the poster, you are the talk

A slide should be a poster for the point, not a transcript of it. A tight title, a few short phrases, one clear image. The detail lives in what you say, not in what you show. That split is the whole craft, and it is hard because leaving things off feels like losing them.

• Bullets are phrases, not sentences, three to nine words.
• One idea per slide, and a title that states it.
• The narration carries the detail the slide leaves out.
• If a slide needs a paragraph, it wants to be two slides.

Why we built the split in

Decklyn writes the slide and the narration as two separate things on purpose. The slide gets the few right words. The spoken track gets the sentences. You end up with a deck that respects the room: something to look at, and someone worth listening to.

Say more by putting less on the slide.