More about handouts

A handout can be helpful to you if you’re a bit nervous. Whenever your audience is referred to a point in your handout, eyes will be on the paper and not you.

Handouts can look attractive, or they can look boring! For a start, make sure that the text isn’t too “solid” - use white space between main points. This allows your audience to make brief notes as they listen.

It’s useful to start the handout with some sort of Aim or Objective associated with the seminar, so your audience can see exactly what you intend to do. If the audience sees your intentions, then sees you fulfill them, you are likely to be regarded as having been very successful.

You don’t want your handout to give everything away. If your audience reads ahead of you, you may appear boring when you repeat something already read.

A good way round this is to turn your main points into questions in your handout, then go logically through answering the questions as you talk. You’ll know you’re winning if members of your audience can be seen writing down your answers to the questions in the white space you’ve carefully left between questions in the handout.