Dear Reader,
I think we all know how embarrassing it can be to notice a mistake in your presentation in front of an important audience. Although some of the following tips may seem obvious, it is worth repeating them anyway:
- Number your pages before you…
- Print out a final copy and read through carefully. In this day and age of sustainability, print on the back of scrap paper. The research shows that proofreading on a computer screen is never as accurate reading a hard copy.
- Make sure the capitals (Großschreibung) are correct:
a. Place a capital at the beginning of a sentence.
b. Capitalize - i. The first word at the beginning of a line
ii. The days of the week and the months
iii. Nationalities, languages and countries
iv. Proper nouns, places and things. - Place a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence (.!?).
- If the word “of” is used more than once in a sentence, check if you can say it another way.
- Think “verb”. English is a verb-based language. German today is a noun-based language (In the days of Goethe, it was also a verb-based language.) If you can change a noun into a verb, the sentence will sound more active in English and will be easier for your audience to remember. Example:
The sales increase went up by 15%.
Sales increased by 15%.
Do you notice the difference?
Good luck on your next presentation.
Kind regards,
Nelly Thomas