The Editor’s Ear: Six Ways to Write Slides That Stick

We have spent a lot of time talking about the arc of your story and the importance of contrast. But eventually, you have to actually type words onto a slide. This is usually where the wheels come off.

Even with a great story, a slide that is clunky, wordy, or structurally messy will force your audience to work too hard. When the brain has to work to decode your bullet points, it stops listening to your voice. This is known as cognitive load. If you use up all their mental energy on reading, they have nothing left for thinking.

If you want your slides to feel effortless and memorable, you need to stop writing like a technical manual and start using the structural tools that human brains are naturally wired to love.

1. The Core Three

There is a reason it is "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" and not just "Life and Liberty." Our brains are pattern-matching machines, and three is the smallest number required to create a pattern. Two points feel like a simple comparison; four points start to feel like a grocery list.

Three points feel like a complete, satisfying, and authoritative thought. When you are tempted to list five benefits of your new strategy, find a way to group them into three core pillars. It forces you to be a better editor, and it ensures your audience can actually recall your points an hour later. If you can't get it down to three, you probably haven't finished your thinking yet.

2. Catchy Phonics

The most effective tools for making a business point "sticky" often involve simple phonics. Using matching initial sounds—like Speed, Savings, and Scalability—works because it creates a subtle auditory link between your ideas. It acts as mental velcro.

A rhythmic quality makes the information easier to digest and much harder to forget. It signals that the ideas are part of a unified whole rather than a random collection of thoughts. When things sound like they belong together, the audience assumes they are strategically aligned. You are using the sound of the words to reinforce the logic of the plan.

3. Consistent Structure

Structural symmetry is the visual equivalent of a clean, organized desk. This simply means using the same grammatical structure for related ideas. This is often called parallelism. If your first bullet point starts with a verb, every bullet point on that slide should start with a verb.

The Messy Way:

• Cutting costs in Q3.

• We want to improve our retention.

• Better customer service.

The Consistent Way:

• Cut costs in Q3.

• Improve retention rates.

• Enhance customer service.

When your structure is consistent, the audience doesn't have to re-orient their brain for every new line. The slide feels professional and allows the audience to focus on meaning rather than awkward phrasing.

4. Clear Contrast

If three is a pattern, two is a choice. Using a contrasting pair is the best way to highlight the before and after principle. It forces the audience to see a clear distinction between the current problem and your proposed future. It removes the gray area where indecision lives.

On a slide, this looks like a simple Less of this, more of that structure:

• Less manual entry, more selling time.

• Less guesswork, more certainty.

• Less friction, more flow.

This device simplifies complex strategies into a binary choice. It makes your solution feel like the only logical path forward by making the alternative look unsustainable.

5. Captivating Cadence

Repeating a specific word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines creates a sense of building intensity. This is a tool for emphasis that guides the audience through a complex idea by creating a logical drumbeat.

If you are presenting a new vision, you might start three consecutive lines with the phrase "We see a world where." By repeating that opening anchor, you signal that each point is a distinct part of the same thread. It creates a cadence that carries them through your argument and makes the final point feel like a natural, inevitable climax.

6. Concise Verbs

Business writing often falls into the trap of turning active verbs into heavy, clunky nouns. This is the primary cause of slide fatigue. Words like implementation, utilization, and optimization take up space and slow down the reader. These are "zombie nouns" because they suck the life and energy out of your sentences.

The Heavy Way:

• The implementation of a new software solution.

• The optimization of our current workflow.

The Concise Way:

• Implement the new software.

• Optimize the workflow.

Active verbs are shorter and imply movement. They tell the audience exactly what is happening or what needs to be done. They transform your slides from a static report into a call to action.

Design for the Brain, Not the Eyes

Using these devices is not about being clever or "poetic." It is about being kind to your audience. When you use these six hooks, you are giving the brain a map it already knows how to read. You are making your information predictable in the best way possible.

The goal of a slide is to support your voice, not compete with it. By using these simple rhetorical tools, you ensure that your message survives the walk from the conference room back to the desk.

-BZ

The Sticky Slide Checklist

Run your slides through this filter. A truly effective slide should hit at least two of these marks.

The Principle	The Goal	The Strategy
Core Three	Completeness	Consolidate lists of 5 or more into three core pillars.
Catchy Phonics	Stickiness	Use alliteration (matching sounds) for key terms.
Consistent Structure	Flow	Start every bullet point with the same part of speech.
Clear Contrast	Clarity	Use a "Less of X, More of Y" contrasting pair.
Captivating Cadence	Momentum	Repeat a powerful opening phrase to open each point.
Concise Verbs	Energy	Swap heavy "-tion" nouns for direct, active verbs.