Microsoft PowerPoint. It’s hard to imagine any professional presentation without it. The slides, combined with a projector and a computer can help drive a presentation’s point across for an entire stadium of people. Alternatively, the slides can be uploaded to the Internet for display on a website, or through a service such Slideshare.

In all cases, it’s amazing to see so many people use PowerPoint in their speeches SO DAMN HORRIBLY.

I have seen very few people actually use PowerPoint (or its Mac counterpart, Keynote) effectively. Hence why it frequently gets a bad name in the corporate/speaking sector.

It doesn’t have to be that way though. Here’s some of the mistakes you DON’T want to make when using it yourself, and if you do, how to fix them:

1. Making the PowerPoint their speech - Too many people have this mistake…well, it’s best to use a presentation to show the mistake:

Just remember: YOUR POWERPOINT IS NOT YOUR SPEECH. Use it as an outline, not as a script.

2. Baring all on the PowerPoint - I know you probsbly think it’s a smart idea to have the entire slide contents appear all at once on your screen, as the audience can see all your points. Here’s the problem though: When all the information is on a slide, your audience is busy darting around it being distracted.

Instead, you should use animation to only show the content as you need it, to help with the flow of your speech. The best thing to do is only show the content you’re currently discussing. However, be sure to not go crazy on the animation, or you’ll be guilty of the PowerPoint sin below:

3. Too much damn animation -  In one of my graduate seminars, the professor decided that everty single point on her PowerPoints should have a random effect. While dodging sin #2, we ended up having to wait up to 10 seconds for each effect to stop. In addition to this, one effect would just POP in, another would pinwheel in, another would EXPLODE onto the scene. This makes following along absolute HELL.

4. Overly distracting backgrounds – Seriously, we don’t need to see the big massive zazzle of your fireworks display, nor the one with the massive crowd or the background so colorful we’d need special glasses to see your text. This is an area where I follow Steve Jobs: A simple gradient will suffice. Minimize the craziness.

What mistakes can you think of?