CRAP is the floor, not the ceiling. Here are the good and bad versions of the same slide, side by side, so you can see the difference, not just hear the rule.
A good slide shows the audience where they are in your argument, then gets out of the way so they can listen to you.
A bad slide makes them read, and a room that's reading isn't listening.
No more than six lines per slide, no more than six words per line. Every word over the limit costs a second of attention you don't get back.
Each pair says exactly the same thing. The audience's experience could not be more different. Watch what the good version leaves out.
Six problems at once. Comic Sans, a gradient, a 38-word italic title, and a subtitle of metadata no one needs to read.
Eight words of title, one of subtitle, one name. Read in two seconds, then the room looks at you.
| Element | Minimum | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Slide title | 40–48 pt | Readable from the back of a 30-seat room. |
| Body / bullet | 24–28 pt | Below 24, half the room squints. |
| Chart axis label | 18–20 pt | Software ships at 10–12 pt. Increase it. |
| Source line | 14–16 pt | Small but legible, in the footer. |
| Anything else | — | Cut it. |
• Following the pandemic, many Korean SMEs underwent a substantial and complicated transition to hybrid and remote arrangements, with implications for productivity, satisfaction, service responsiveness, and operating costs that varied across sectors…
• A panel survey by Lee & Park (2024) followed 412 SMEs across four sectors over 36 months; productivity outcomes were positive overall but depended heavily on prior cloud investment…
• In service-heavy sectors the effects were negative or neutral, contradicting optimistic industry white papers from consultancies with a financial stake in adoption…
Now the speaker competes with the slide. The room can't read and listen at once. It will read.
Four keyword bullets, one image, one source. A map of the next sixty seconds, not a transcript.
Open your own deck. Which slide is closest to the “don't” column?
Six mistakes destroy more academic decks than all the rest combined. Each comes with the one-line rule that prevents it.
Print your deck four slides to a page. If you can't tell at a glance what each slide is for, neither can the audience, and they won't have a printout.
Take your busiest slide. Run it through the studio.
Show a partner the rebuilt slide for five seconds, then hide it. Can they say what it was about?
Chapter 22, pages 96 to 99, including every good/bad slide pair, the deck-killer gallery, and the “diagnose this slide” lab.
Chapter 22 · Next, the pre-submit self-assessment