How to Fix a Slide With Too Much Text

Look at the last deck you sent. There is at least one slide, probably several, that has too much text. A paragraph, then bullets under the paragraph, then a footnote, then a caption on an image nobody is going to read.

This is the most common slide problem in real decks. When we looked at the decks people uploaded to PitchBoost for redesign, 23% of slides carried more than 80 words (the research is here). Some carry 200. Those slides do not communicate. They archive.

Short answer: a slide has too much text if it has more than about 30 words, or if someone cannot read all of it in five seconds. Fix it with one of three moves: split it into several slides with one point each, turn the prose into a chart, table or diagram, or cut everything you would not actually say out loud and move it to the speaker notes. Rewriting the title as a full sentence that states the point does more than any other single change.

Here is how to tell when a slide has too much text, what to actually do about it, and when a dense slide is the right call.

How much text is too much on a slide?

Two rough tests. Either one puts a slide in the "too much" pile.

The 30-word test. If a slide has more than 30 words of prose (bullets included), the audience is reading, not listening. In a live talk, you are competing with your own slide.

The five-second test. If a person cannot read the entire slide in five seconds, they will not read any of it in the time you spend on it. They will skim, decide it is a wall of text, and look at their phone.

Most slides fail one or both tests. That is fine to know; it is not fine to leave.

The exceptions are real, and matter. Reference slides sent as a document, decks that live as PDFs and never get presented, and appendix slides for Q&A can legitimately hold more text. What they cannot hold is text that pretends to be a live slide.

Why text-heavy slides happen

Almost every dense slide traces to one of five causes. If you can name the cause, the fix is faster.

1. The slide is a document, not a slide. Someone dropped a section of a report into the deck and called it "the slide about X". Fix: split into three or four slides, each with one point.
2. The speaker does not trust themselves to remember the point. The bullets are a script. Fix: move the script to speaker notes, put one line on the slide.
3. The slide is trying to include everyone. Every stakeholder had a bullet added. Fix: pick the one audience the slide is for and cut the rest.
4. The slide is trying to prove rigor. The dense text is there to show homework was done. Fix: put the rigor on a reference slide or an appendix; put the finding on the live slide.
5. The slide grew. Nothing on this slide was added in bad faith; it accumulated across three revisions. Fix: rewrite the slide from scratch as if starting over.

Which cause it is decides the fix. A slide that grew across revisions gets rewritten from scratch. A slide that is really a document gets split into three slides.

The three moves that fix almost every text-heavy slide

If you are staring at a dense slide and do not know where to start, one of these works.

Move 1: split it

The slide has three things happening on it. Cut it into three slides, each with one thing. Each new slide gets its own title stating the point. This is the most common fix and often the fastest.

The pushback is always "but then the deck is too long." A 30-slide deck of clean slides is easier to follow than a 12-slide deck of dense ones. Length is not the problem. Density is.

Move 2: convert it to a visual

The slide has a comparison, a process, a hierarchy or a distribution buried in the prose. Draw it. A three-column table beats three bullets that each say "under condition X, Y happens". A flow diagram beats a paragraph describing a workflow. A chart with three bars beats "sales grew 30% in Q1, 15% in Q2, and 20% in Q3."

The rule of thumb: if the slide contains numbers, dates, categories or steps, some part of it should be a picture.

Move 3: cut, then keep cutting

You do not need every sentence. You do not need the qualifier at the end of the sentence. You do not need the parenthetical. Keep the finding, cut the caveat, put the caveat in speaker notes.

A useful heuristic: read the slide out loud. Every phrase you would not actually say in that order, cut. What is left is the slide.

The structural fix: title-first slides

The single change that fixes more text-heavy slides than any other is writing the slide title as a full sentence that states the point of the slide.

Compare:

• "Q3 Results" (three words, no information)
• "Q3 revenue beat plan by 12% on strength of enterprise deals" (14 words, the whole point)

The moment the title carries the point, the rest of the slide gets to just support it. A chart. A single bullet. A number. The dense bullets that were carrying the argument become redundant, and you can cut them.

Every slide, one full-sentence title. The deck gets shorter and clearer at the same time.

When a dense slide is actually the right call

Not every text-heavy slide should be gutted. A few cases where more text is fine:

• Reference or appendix slides. A pricing table, a full methodology, a list of citations. These are documents. Treat them as documents; do not talk to them live.
• Sent-not-presented decks. A leave-behind, a report, an investor update sent as a PDF. If nobody is presenting it, the deck is doing the work of a document, and denser is fine.
• Legal or regulatory slides. Sometimes the disclosure has to be visible. That is fine; own it, put it on its own slide, and do not pretend it is a live slide.

The mistake is not the dense slide. The mistake is a dense slide inside a live deck, trying to be talked to.

The fastest way to fix a whole deck at once

You can fix one slide by hand. Fixing 30 by hand takes hours. Two approaches speed it up.

By hand, mechanically. Go through the deck once with one rule: every slide title becomes a full-sentence finding. Do only that. When you are done, do a second pass: every slide over 30 words, split or cut. Do only that. Working one rule at a time is faster than freehand redesign.

Rebuild the deck. Upload the current version to PitchBoost. Point it at your website. You choose how much it touches your words. Keep your text exactly as written and PitchBoost redesigns the layout around it, giving dense slides real hierarchy. Or let it condense: it writes takeaway titles, splits single dense slabs into cleaner slides, and turns lists into tables or diagrams where that fits. Either way your numbers are kept exactly, and you get an editable .pptx back to adjust from there.

The free redesign preview applies the treatment to two of your slides so you can see what a text-heavy slide looks like after a rebuild before you commit.

What to check after the fix

Three passes on the rebuilt version:

1. Every slide title says something. If any title is one or two words (Results, Introduction, Findings), rewrite it as a full-sentence finding.
2. No slide has more than 30 words in a live section of the deck. The reference and appendix slides can. The live ones cannot.
3. Every dense idea is either a picture or has been split. If a slide has a comparison, a process or a distribution buried in prose, it should be a chart, a table or a diagram.

Read the deck once as a skimmer, reading only titles. If the argument holds when you only read the titles, the slides are doing their job.

The short version

Slides with too much text are almost always fixable by three moves: split into several slides, convert prose into a visual, or cut anything you would not actually say out loud. Full-sentence slide titles fix more density problems than any other single change.

Dense slides are only appropriate in appendices, reference decks and documents-that-happen-to-be-slides. Everywhere else, the rule is one point per slide, 30 words maximum on the live face, everything else in speaker notes.

If a whole deck needs the treatment and you do not have the hours, PitchBoost redesigns your current deck in your brand from your website, either keeping your text as written or, if you choose, condensing dense slides and sharpening titles, and returns an editable .pptx. The preview shows the treatment on two slides for free.

The other common slide problems have their own guides: inconsistent fonts and layouts and broken charts.

Have a deck with too much text on every slide? Upload it and see the rebuilt version on two slides before you commit.