by Allen Wyatt
(last updated November 14, 2013)
Google Presentation is a handy and powerful tool for creating slide-based presentations. The key to a successful presentation is showing the information you need to convey in an inviting, clear manner. This means you need to be concerned with formatting the text on your slides.
In order to format text, you should follow the general procedure of selecting whatever it is you want to format and then applying the formatting. Presentation applies the formatting to only the text you selected, so it is less likely there will be misunderstandings about what your formatting applies to.
If you don't select anything before modifying the formatting, then how Presentation behaves depends on whether you are changing the formatting of characters or paragraphs. If you click a paragraph-formatting tool (such as the Indent tool or the Numbered List tool), then Presentation applies that formatting to the paragraph in which the insertion point is located. If you click a character-formatting tool (such as the Font tool, the Font Size tool, or several others), then Presentation applies the changed formatting to whatever you immediately start typing.
If you make formatting mistakes, you can always use the Undo tool on the toolbar or press Ctrl+Z. (I've found these to be very helpful—and necessary—when formatting slides.) You can also "start over" by selecting text and then clicking the Clear Formatting tool, located at the very right of the toolbar.
While you will probably do all your formatting by using the various tools on the toolbar, you should also realize that all the formatting tools are also available from the Formatting menu. You may end up using these if, for some reason, you have hidden the toolbar so it is not visible.
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