Common Presentation Terms

It is important to learn the terminology involved in presentation software to be able to create good presentations and use the software in question. Understanding common presentation terms will also help the user keep their presentation interesting and help the audience intrigued.

• Action Button: An item that may be added to a presentation containing pre-programmed commands for completing common tasks. For example, the right and left pointing arrows that a user can click during a presentation to advance the user and viewer to the next slide.
• Animation: Visual effects that may be added to individual items on a slide instead of the slide itself. They can be added to titles, text, pictures, videos, etc. Though, when they applied to the changing of a slide it is specifically called a “transition”.
• Color Theme: A predefined set of colors that are complementary to each other and can be added to various presentation elements.
• Design Theme: A predefined set of options for formatting the look and feel of a presentation that is under the user’s control. Backgrounds, layouts, colors, fonts, text sizes, and bullets are a few examples of theme settings.
• Normal View: This view displays three items as the user actively works on their presentation. These items are the slides and outline panes, the slide pane, and the notes pane.
• Notes Master: This view will determine the layout and formatting of the speaker’s notes
• Presentation File: A file that contains any work that the user has done in a presentation application. This includes slides, text, images, sound, transitions, animations, timing settings, and notes.
• Slide: An individual page or screen in an overall slideshow. Text, images, sounds, videos, animations, etc, can be added to each slide as well.
• Slide Layout: Also known as layout, the user decides on a layout based on what type of information they would like to add to the slide. For example, the title slide will likely use the title slide layout provided. A slide with bulleted information will likely use a bulleted slide layout. A slide with multimedia content such as pictures, videos, and charts would likely use a content layout slide. A slide for subheadings would likely use a section header layout, etc.
• Slide Master: Also known as master, it is a template that stores design options for applying to the presentation. These include font styles, placeholder sizes as well as positions, color schemes, background designs, images, videos, etc. With this, you can make changes to all slides in the presentation at once and make global changes in formatting font types, sizes, bullet shapes, and colors. Lastly, it includes master templates for speaker notes and handouts.

Source and Feature Image by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash