Rhetorically
effective presentations tend
toward brevity and succinctness, even terseness.
The size of a PowerPoint slide requires brevity, so information is
presented in outline form and short sentences or fragments. Presentation
software allows writers to share information in graphic form or sound or video
files, further reducing the need for text. Transitions are provided by movement
from one slide or file to the next.
Such
texts, of course, are meant as visual aids to oral presentations, but they often
carry significantly more information than traditional visual aids have done, and
hard copy is often distributed to audiences to provide for additional note taking. These features make presentations
an increasingly important genre for classroom use by students as well as
faculty.