Presentations

How to build a presentation that a listener, or the reader of a deck, follows and remembers at the least cost. For the whole family of repositories, also how to draw a figure or a diagram.

It extends reader-ergonomics. The principles, their grades and the checks live there and are not repeated here. This repository adds only what is particular to presentations.

Take it

Copy the example deck, check it against the release of the standard this repository pins, then make it your talk:

git clone https://github.com/Tewf/reader-ergonomics-presentations presentations
git clone https://github.com/Tewf/reader-ergonomics
git -C reader-ergonomics checkout $(grep -m1 -o '[0-9a-f]\{40\}' presentations/.github/workflows/checks.yml)   # the release this repository pins
mkdir -p my-talk/shapes my-talk/checks
cp presentations/shapes/example-talk.* my-talk/shapes/
cp -r presentations/checks/local presentations/checks/config.toml my-talk/checks/
python3 reader-ergonomics/checks/run.py my-talk

Fix each error, fix or explain each warning, and answer the questions in my-talk/checks/out/needs-judgment.md. The same outline for any slide tool is shapes/talk.md. To make the shapes your own, or to disagree with a rule, follow reader-ergonomics' Take your own version: a reader style, an extension or an issue, by what the disagreement is about.

Status: version 1.0.0, released 2026-10-29. The standard has seventeen principles in four groups: nine for a talk, with three contexts, the talk shape and an example deck; eight for a figure in any document, with the figure shape. Eight checks run here, seven on HTML decks and one judgment per figure. The deck checks were tried on three test decks, an academic, a business and a casual one, which changed them; those decks are not public, and no principle has been tested on listeners. It is an informal reading of published research and practice: not an official standard, not a peer-reviewed study, not a new result, and not a claim to the state of the art.

How it is made: with Claude, an AI assistant by Anthropic, under the maintainer's direction, the way reader-ergonomics was made. AI agents draft the literature reviews; every reference is resolved by script, and a number read only in a summary is marked "(secondary)". Corrections are welcome as issues.

Scope

One base, and contexts that override it, the way a reader style overrides the standard. Anyone's own way of presenting is a style of its own, kept by them, that overrides this standard in turn. Since 2026-10-29 it is also the family's standard for figures and diagrams in any document (decision 0006).

This standard holds a base, what any presentation is, and three contexts that override it: the academic talk, the business presentation and the casual talk; a person's own style overrides the whole standard in turn.

Graphviz source

// The scope of reader-ergonomics-presentations (en): a base, contexts that override it, and a personal style.
digraph scope {
  graph [rankdir=BT, compound=true, nodesep=0.4, ranksep=0.55, bgcolor="white", pad=0.2, fontname="Inter"];
  node  [shape=box, style="rounded,filled", fontname="Inter", fontsize=13, margin="0.2,0.1", penwidth=1.5, fontcolor="#1F2328"];
  edge  [fontname="Inter", fontsize=11, color="#3D434B", fontcolor="#55575F", penwidth=1.3, arrowsize=0.8];
  subgraph cluster_standard {
    label=<<font point-size="11" color="#55575F">this standard</font>>; labeljust=l;
    style="rounded"; color="#6A6D77"; penwidth=1.2;
    BASE [label=<<b>the base: what a presentation is</b><br/><font point-size="11" color="#55575F">a paced medium, a speaker, a room</font>>, fillcolor="#E8EEF8", color="#2F5DA8"];
    A [label=<<b>the academic talk</b><br/><font point-size="11" color="#55575F">conference, seminar, defence</font>>, fillcolor="#E6F2EA", color="#2E7D4F"];
    B [label=<<b>the business presentation</b><br/><font point-size="11" color="#55575F">pitch, sale, executive briefing</font>>, fillcolor="#E6F2EA", color="#2E7D4F"];
    C [label=<<b>the casual talk</b><br/><font point-size="11" color="#55575F">meetup, club, friends</font>>, fillcolor="#E6F2EA", color="#2E7D4F"];
    {rank=same; A; B; C}
  }
  OWN [label=<<b>your own style</b><br/><font point-size="11" color="#55575F">kept by you</font>>, fillcolor="#FBEDE4", color="#B4541A", style="rounded,filled,dashed"];
  A -> BASE [label=" overrides"]; B -> BASE; C -> BASE;
  OWN -> B [lhead=cluster_standard, style=dashed, color="#6A6D77", label=" overrides in turn"];
}

Part	Holds	State
standard.md	the card: how to use the standard, and every principle with its grade	written
principles/	seventeen principles in four groups: pace, slide, talk, figure	written; tried on three test decks, not tested on listeners
reader-styles/	the contexts, as audiences: academic, business, casual	written
shapes/	the talk shape with an example deck in HTML, and the figure shape with a worked example	written
checks/	eight checks, seven on HTML decks and one judgment per figure, with their tests; the program checks of figures are reader-ergonomics' own	written
decisions/	the choices that shaped this repository, one record each	seven records
evidence/	two multivocal reviews: presentations, in ten questions from the voice and the slide to motion, colour, business and casual talks; and figures, how a figure or a diagram is drawn (question 11); 258 works	written, audited

What a presentation adds, and what it does not

What is new in a talk:

the listener cannot set the pace or reread, which brings in the modality, redundancy and segmenting principles;
the speaker is part of the medium;
the room sets legibility, since slides are read from a distance.

What reader-ergonomics already holds is linked, never copied: signalling, a figure next to its text, typography.

Where it came from

It began on 2026-10-28 as the talk half of reader-ergonomics-academic, and moved here on 2026-10-29 with its history. The two halves had grown apart: when they split, their reviews cited 147 and 225 works, and shared 2.

Check it

git clone https://github.com/Tewf/reader-ergonomics
python3 reader-ergonomics/checks/run.py path/to/this/repository

CI runs the same checks on every push, and a run fails on any error (checks.yml). The badge at the top is the last result on master. Every push to master also renders the site, tewf.github.io/reader-ergonomics-presentations (pages.yml).

Licence

Code under the Apache License 2.0; prose under CC BY 4.0. Reuse it as you wish, with credit to this repository; CITATION.cff gives a citation if you need one.