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Career Management

Mark,

Is it OK to use title case for bullets on slides?

I notice you do this for your slides.

However, in the cast "Presenting with PowerPoint" you recommend NOT using Title Case For Bullets. You recommend using sentence case and Title Case for Slide Titles.

HMac's picture
Submitted by HMac on Wednesday March 26th, 2008 9:18 am

I agree with the recommendation NOT to use Title Case for bullets (I haven't seen M/M's slides, so I can't comment on that use. Though I'm gonna go with a wild guess that it's either an oversight, or it was done purposely for some reason).

To help people visually navigate your slides, you need to establish a "typographic hierarchy" (for more, see Ellen Lupton's "[i]Thinking With Type"[/i]).

The use of case, italicizing, using bold, changing colors, font size - all of these are tools that [i]might[/i] be used to help the audience understand the slide.

I say "might" because they're best used VERY sparingly; otherwise, you have something that looks like the dog's breakfast.

The point here is that one of the visual differences between the title of a slide and the body of a slide is changing case. Reserve the use of Title Case for titles.

Chelle's picture
Submitted by Chelle on Thursday March 27th, 2008 9:52 pm

When I see text in title case, my mind goes into "what it's about" mode and my eyes look at the Titled words. When I see sentence case, it's in "what it is" mode and I automatically concentrate more.

I Find It Distracting When A Sentence Is In Title Case. I'm neither thinking that deeply nor reading every word, then I realize I should be and have to start over.