Editing Microsoft PowerPoint (section)

====Use it less====
{{See also |Edward Tufte|Anti-PowerPoint Party}}
An early reaction was that the broader use of PowerPoint was a mistake, and should be reversed. An influential example of this came from [[Edward Tufte]], an authority on information design, who has been a professor of political science, statistics, and computer science at Princeton and Yale, but is best known for his self-published books on data visualization, which have sold nearly 2&nbsp;million copies as of 2014.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.edwardtufte.com/files/ETresume.pdf |title=Edward R. Tufte, Resume |last1=Tufte |first1=Edward |author-link1=Edward Tufte |date=December 2014 |website=Edward Tufte personal website |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009173114/http://www.edwardtufte.com/files/ETresume.pdf |url-status=live |archive-date=October 9, 2016 |access-date=September 20, 2017 |quote=1.9&nbsp;million copies of 4 books and 422,000 copies of 4 booklets printed from 1983–2014, and continuing.}}</ref>

In 2003, he published a widely-read booklet titled ''The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint,'' revised in 2006.<ref name="Tufte-2003-2006" /> Tufte found a number of problems with the "cognitive style" of PowerPoint, many of which he attributed to the standard default style templates:<ref name="Tufte-2003-2006" />

{{Blockquote|PowerPoint's convenience for some presenters is costly to the content and the audience. These costs arise from the ''cognitive style characteristics of the standard default PP presentation:'' foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, an intensely hierarchical single-path structure as the model for organizing every type of content, breaking up narratives and data into slides and minimal fragments, rapid temporal sequencing of thin information rather than focused spatial analysis, conspicuous chartjunk and PP Phluff, branding of slides with logotypes, a preoccupation with format not content, incompetent designs for data graphics and tables, and a smirky commercialism that turns information into a sales pitch and presenters into marketeers ''[italics in original]''.}}

Tufte particularly advised against using PowerPoint for reporting scientific analyses, using as a dramatic example some slides made during the flight of the space shuttle ''Columbia'' after it had been damaged by an accident at liftoff, slides which poorly communicated the engineers' limited understanding of what had happened.<ref name="Tufte-2003-2006" />{{Rp|pages=8–14}} For such technical presentations, and for most occasions apart from its initial domain of sales presentations, Tufte advised against using PowerPoint at all; in many situations, according to Tufte, it would be better to substitute high-resolution graphics or concise prose documents as handouts for the audience to study and discuss, providing a great deal more detail.<ref name="Tufte-2003-2006" />

Many commentators enthusiastically joined in Tufte's vivid criticism of PowerPoint uses,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Parks |first=Bob |date=August 30, 2012 |title=Death to PowerPoint! |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-08-30/death-to-powerpoint |url-access=subscription |newspaper=[[Bloomberg Businessweek]] |issn=0007-7135 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150312035814/http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-08-30/death-to-powerpoint |url-status=live |archive-date=March 12, 2015 |access-date=September 23, 2017}}</ref> and at a conference held in 2013 (a decade after Tufte's booklet appeared) one paper claimed that "Despite all the criticism about his work, Tufte can be considered as the single most influential author in the discourse on PowerPoint. ... While his approach was not rigorous from a research perspective, his articles received wide resonance with the public at large ... ."<ref>{{Cite conference |title=10 Years after Tufte's "Cognitive Style of PowerPoint": Synthesizing its Constraining Qualities |url=https://filetea.me/t1szChzbSBbQkuvlhlAXqxljg |last1=Kernbach |first1=Sebastian |last2=Bresciani |first2=Sabrina |chapter=10 Years after Tufte's "Cognitive Style of Power ''Point''": Synthesizing its Constraining Qualities |date=July 16–18, 2013 |conference=Information Visualisation (IV), 2013 17th International Conference |location=London |pages=345–350 |doi=10.1109/IV.2013.44 |isbn=978-1-4799-0834-9 |publisher=IEEE |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6Y8PV6QHI?url=https://filetea.me/t1szChzbSBbQkuvlhlAXqxljg |url-status=dead |archive-date=April 28, 2015 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> There were also others who disagreed with Tufte's assertion that the PowerPoint program reduces the quality of presenters' thoughts: [[Steven Pinker]], professor of psychology at MIT and later Harvard, had earlier argued that "If anything, PowerPoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Zuckerman |first=Laurence |date=April 17, 1999 |title=Words Go Right to the Brain, But Can They Stir the Heart?; Some Say Popular Software Debases Public Speaking |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/17/arts/words-go-right-brain-but-can-they-stir-heart-some-say-popular-software-debases.html |newspaper=New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=September 23, 2017}}</ref> Pinker later reinforced this opinion: "Any general opposition to PowerPoint is just dumb, ... It's like denouncing lectures—before there were awful PowerPoint presentations, there were awful scripted lectures, unscripted lectures, slide shows, chalk talks, and so on."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Feith |first=David |date=July 31, 2009 |title=Speaking Truth to PowerPoint |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204619004574318473921093400 |url-access=subscription |newspaper=Wall Street Journal |issn=0099-9660 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6ZSdhYhA9?url=https://filetea.me/t1sq7c2KUvATqeAdKcx5xc1gQ |url-status=live |archive-date=June 21, 2015 |access-date=September 23, 2017}}</ref>

Much of the early commentary, on all sides, was "informal" and "anecdotal", because empirical research had been limited.<ref>{{Cite conference |title=10 Years after Tufte's "Cognitive Style of PowerPoint": Synthesizing its Constraining Qualities |url=https://filetea.me/t1szChzbSBbQkuvlhlAXqxljg |last1=Kernbach |first1=Sebastian |last2=Bresciani |first2=Sabrina |chapter=10 Years after Tufte's "Cognitive Style of Power ''Point''": Synthesizing its Constraining Qualities |date=July 16–18, 2013 |conference=Information Visualisation (IV), 2013 17th International Conference |location=London |pages=345–350 |doi=10.1109/IV.2013.44 |isbn=978-1-4799-0834-9 |publisher=IEEE |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6Y8PV6QHI?url=https://filetea.me/t1szChzbSBbQkuvlhlAXqxljg |url-status=dead |archive-date=April 28, 2015 |quote=Because every day a huge number of people meet to exchange ideas and make decisions with PowerPoint slides being displayed on the wall, investigating the tool is enormously important ... . Despite the pervasiveness of PowerPoint in our culture there have been few empirical studies and most of the non-empirical work is based on casual essays and informal anecdotal reviews which very often take a polemic and overall negative position on PowerPoint, rather than conducting formal scholarship. This lack of rigorous studies and empirical research is surprising given the enormous complexity and importance of the PowerPoint tool. |df=mdy-all }}</ref>