The typography of a document, be it a journal article or presentation slide, communicates much about the document. One important choice in typography is the selection of a typestyle (also called font). For instance, Garamond conveys a sense of tradition in documents, which is why Garamond is used in several journals. Garamond belongs to a class of typestyles known as serif fonts, which have projecting short strokes, such as the little feet on a serif "m." Another category of typestyles is sans serif. These fonts do not have the projecting strokes (consider a sans serif "m"). One of the most common sans serif fonts is Arial. Other important choices of typography include the type size, the choice of all capitals or lowercase, and the choice of bold, italic, or normal type.

1. 1. For presentation slides, use a sans serif font rather than a serif font. Just because a typestyle such as Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, or Garamond is appropriate for reports and papers does not mean that it is appropriate for presentation slides. The most important consideration in choosing a typestyle for a presentation slide is not tradition, but reading speed. In a presentation, reading speed is important because the audience members, splitting their concentration between what the presenter shows and what the presenter says, give themselves only a few seconds to read each projected slide. In general, when the numbers of words are few such as on presentation slides, sans serif fonts are...