9.7: Employing Proofing Tools

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In today’s social media/texting communication environment, punctuation, spelling and grammar have begun to lose its luster. While this cavalier attitude might be acceptable for personal communications, professional communication still demands proper attention to details. Why is it such a big deal to proofread a PowerPoint presentation? Well, if you make an error in a Word document, one or perhaps a couple of people will notice. However, a presentation is usually given to a large audience, so any spelling, grammar or punctuation error will be magnified by multiples.

PowerPoint provides users with several proofing features – including the Spelling and Grammar tool – that can help create professional, error-free presentations. From the Review tab, clicking the Spelling button will open the Spelling pane to the right of the slide pane.

For each error in the presentation, PowerPoint will offer one or more suggestions, which can be ignored or selected by clicking the Change button. The Spell Checker only recognizes misspelled and unknown words, not misused words, so proofreading a presentation is still important. The Thesaurus is a fun tool for suggesting synonyms for over-used words. Reusing the same words too often reduces the readability and professionalism of a presentation, so try out the Thesaurus! It is also a great resource for solving crossword puzzles!