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It is all too easy to follow the instructions included with your favorite presentation program, and then to assume that you have done everything possible to work effectively. However, the instructions won�t help you enough. The result may be so pathetic that you could have just distributed an article for your audience to read. The guidelines in this series of articles do not appear in your computer manual, but they will help you prepare better presentations.

Do you have to present a series of numbers? Don't present them as text or as a diagram. Make a chart out of them. Better yet - group the numbers so that you have several charts, one after the other. People can accept this data much more easily than when they see text.

Let�s prove that charts are better than statistics.

Click on My Computer, Drive C, Properties. Some boring statistics will give you a precise status report in megabytes or gigabytes, listing the room used by the files, the total size of those files (there is a difference between those two figures), the remaining room on your hard drive.

Do you really care about that information? If you�re like most people, you ignore those numbers and glance at the pie chart located right below it. That chart will help you determine the information that you need quickly, and it will mean more to you than facts, figures, and numbers.

Now click out of that screen, and then think about it for a second.

See? You still remember the picture. No, the information is not precise, but that doesn't matter. You may even recall the basic picture tomorrow.

That�s why charts are useful. They�re memorable. They are also easy to absorb.

Keep that in mind when you prepare your next presentation. True, numbers are more accurate and they give more information. However, you are unlikely to want to present information that way.

The success of your presentation is based on the form in which you present it. Try to replace dry facts and figures with good, effective charts.