At some point in time, and perhaps sooner than you realize, you almost certainly will be called upon to make an oral presentation to colleagues, administrators, or a general audience whose background lies outside your specialized area of expertise. The opportunity may appear in the guise of a dissertation defense, a job interview, or as a speaker to a community group.

Nearly every such presentation has two basic components – text and illustrations. Although both elements have long received attention in the context of the primary research article, scientific writing instruction has tended to treat these other communication channels as a relatively minor afterthought. The implicit assumption has been that oral presentations involve only minor repackaging of a written document.

In recent years, however, this assumption has been challenged by new developments that have increased the status of visual communication and given it a surprisingly powerful role to play in modern scientific exchanges. Visual materials have become easy and inexpensive to produce, and in response, people are tending to use them more. Presentation software makes it relatively straightforward to generate materials that once took hours or days to create. As a consequence, visual communication has become a basic part of almost all effective scientific presentations.

In some ways, written and spoken communications are quite similar. In other ways, they differ markedly. However, for both, the content of your message must be king and graphics must be but court attendants.