Have You Tried the 10/20/30 Rule for Better Presentations? Share Your Thoughts!

Friends,

A colleague of mine shared an interesting point on presentations that is simple, practical, and, as assured by my friend, quite effective. It is called the golden thumb rule of presentations: The 10/20/30 rule. A PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points!

Interesting to note. Please try it out and share your comments.

Regards,
Rajeev.V

It depends! Currently, on a presentation, I used around 30 slides for approximately 30 minutes. The font size usually depends on the audience's reach and the distance you are speaking out to. Anyways, it's something to take care of, and such rules are not always effective. It is a personal and situational demand.

PS: Good to be back after a 6-9 months break. Sorry for it.

I don't think we can use this formula *per se*. It all depends on the kind of participants you have, the subject matter, duration of the training programme, and a few other factors.

Dinesh V Divekar

Thank you, Rajeev. Another useful rule of thumb for PowerPoint presentations is the 7 by 7 rule: No more than seven points per slide and no more than seven words per point.

Vicki Heath
Training Tips

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Hi,

Thank you, Rajeev, for sharing the 10/20/30 rule. Also, thanks to Vicki for explaining the 7 by 7 rule. I would say these are tips and not a generalized rule, as it changes from situation to situation. However, these tips can be very helpful while designing the presentation.

Regards,
Shashank

These are only tips which may be considered according to the need and context. The word 'thumb rule' should not be viewed as being prescriptive. Thanks for the responses.

Rajeev.V

Maybe thumb rules are context-based, but practically, it depends on your coverage, topic, strength of the audience, size of the hall, and purpose (whether pure academic, marketing, technology awareness, etc.). I don't think it can be generalized. Again, these are only some observations. Thanks for your ideas also.