Terminology, a word that is a ticket straight back to the school desk you so willingly left behind after you graduated. And for those of you who haven’t graduated yet, then it’s a ticket straight back to your English class. 

Teachers constantly remind students to use proper terminology, so what exactly is terminology? And what does it have to do with presentation? Well, terminology is a proper word used to describe a particular subject or field. Good terminology is key because it establishes a relationship and it helps you have a better understanding of presentation speak. Here are a few of the most common terms used in a presentation.

• Animation
• Action Button
• Slide/slideshow/slide view 
• Bullet
• Design template
• Task pane

Animation

Animations are an effect that can be applied to your slide in order to make it more interesting. You can place it on nearly everything in your slide; images, text, bullet points etc. Animations can make words on your slide suddenly jump in or appear. This brings some sort of interest from an audience instead of them having to listen to a person who drones on and on and has a really plain presentation.

Action Button 

The action button is simple, and not as exciting as it sounds. Basically, the action button is the button that’s clicked in order for the presentation to move forward. Like the right arrow key, or space bar.

Slides

Slides have different styles and layouts. Layouts meaning how it is presented, whether your info is on the left or the right or even the middle. There are a few options that PowerPoint— or whatever presentation device your using— will offer. There are title slides, slides for your information, picture slides, charts, slides, and normal empty slides.

Bullet 

That list that I created above is called a “bullet list”. It’s not called a list because those little dots on the left are bullets. It’s not to say that it only comes in round shapes, because it can come in a wide variety of forms. A bullet can come in a diamond form, in Roman numerals, in ABC’s, etc. And they are used to highlight points or topics in your slide. A slide with full paragraphs is hard to read, but a slide with bullet points provides the general idea while the rest of the information is presented by you.

Design Template

A design template is the overall scheme of your presentation. When you click a new design, it changes everything in your presentation. On the right side it will also offer design ideas, in case the route that you want to go in terms of the look of each of the slides.

Task pane

This pane pops up on the right side of your monitor and offers you options that are accessible to you. For example, when you are applying animation to your slides it will display the options on the right task bar.

And that is it for most common presentation terms. Bye.