Monthly Archives: July 2025

What constitutes a good choice vs. a bad choice, when it comes to formatting slides? So many things! But for this blog post, let’s look at adding space between bulleted lines of text on a slide.

Let’s use the following two slides as an example. Both of these sample slides, Slide 1 and Slide 2, have 5 bullet points. Both have spacing between the bullets. But only one is built as a “good” slide (in our humble opinion)! 

Slide 1 – The Wrong Way: Extra Lines Between Bullets 

Our Slide 1 example has the most common formatting solution, which is also the “bad” formatting solution. An extra line has been added between each bullet. While this adds extra space visually, it introduces blank paragraphs and creates other formatting issues when the slide needs to be edited. 

Problems with this method (aka – why this is a bad choice): 

• Inconsistent spacing if the font size or line height changes 

• Screen readers or accessibility tools may misinterpret the content 

• Extra lines count as content, which affects slide layouts and animations 

• It is more difficult to manage or edit later 

Slide 2 – The Right Way: Paragraph Spacing

In our example on Slide 2, the professional formatting option is used to create added space between each bullet; paragraph spacing has been applied. Specifically: 

• Paragraph spacing before each line of text is set to 18 pt (this can be increased or decreased for more or less space separating the bullets, designers’ choice!)

• No manual line breaks are used 

Why this is the better method (aka – the “good” choice): 

• Cleaner formatting behind the scenes

• Consistent spacing, regardless of font or text size

• Easier to edit, you’re not dealing with phantom blank lines

• Better for accessibility

• Simply, more professional formatting

TLC Creative’s Best Practice

When you need to visually group or separate bullet points: 

• Use Paragraph Spacing “Before” or “After” in the Paragraph settings (we prefer setting “Before” spacing and leaving “After” at 0) 
• Avoid manual spacing with extra lines (e.g. don’t hit that Enter key and quietly remove the bullet with a backspace, and please don’t do a Shift+Return for “soft returns”)—these shortcutscan cause long-term formatting frustrations
• Bonus Tip: You can set paragraph spacing directly in your slide master for automatic, consistent formatting across slides

Conclusion

Adding space between bullets makes content more legible—but how you add that space matters. Using manual line breaks creates cluttered code under the surface. Using proper paragraph spacing gives you clean, consistent, and professional slides every time. 

Let your formatting work with you, not against you. 

-The TLC Creative Design Team 

PowerPoint presentations often need references, disclaimers, or legal notices on slides—but not always. Many of the presentations we work on have a variety of text box formatting and location needs for these important (but often small) amounts of text. Internally, our design team uses a special set of rules for formatting these text boxes. This makes the formatting task quicker and easier, and keeps the slide content clear. Let’s dive in!

What is a Reference Text Box? 

On many slides – especially when showing data, citing sources, branding details, or adding footnotes – a small reference text box is needed at the bottom of the slide.  

TIP: because this is generally not a text placeholder on the Master Slide Layout, we paste a reference version onto an extra (hidden) slide so we have all of these formatting options set to go! Here are the two “template” or reference text boxes, ready to be pasted into our slide deck. 

TLC Creative Formatting Guidelines for Reference Text Boxes 

When setting up a reference text box, these formatting details help maintain readability without distracting from the main content: 

1. Font Size: Small – 8 to 9 pt (adjust as needed for the font being used) 

2. Alignment: Left-aligned 

3. Text Box Margins: None (set all text box margins to 0) 

4. Vertical Position: Bottom aligned – because this is a bottom-of-the-slide element, additional lines of text should move upward, keeping the bottom line of text always in the same position 

5. Paragraph Spacing: 4 pt before – provides a small gap between multiple lines of text when longer citations or source text is needed 

6. Width: Set the text box to full slide width, and shorten as needed, to fit the layout design 

For teams managing brand consistency or legal compliance, reference notes can make a big difference in creating polished, professional presentations. 

Need help optimizing your templates or standardizing presentations – like assuring all reference text is consistent across all slides?
The TLC Creative team can help bring consistency, clarity, and design precision to every slide.

–The TLC Creative Design Team 

One of the biggest things that irks us at TLC Creative is stacking text boxes on top of shapes in PowerPoint. It might seem like a quick fix, but it’s just lazy formatting. Don’t do this – please! It almost always can be avoided because it almost always leads to formatting headaches down the road. 

What is “stacked text”? It’s placing a text box on top of a PowerPoint shape. This creates two objects on the slide that need to be moved and aligned together instead of just one object. 

This often happens because someone is not familiar with how to control a shape’s text. Knowing how to edit text inside a shape is ultimately going to make future slide edits happier, vs becoming a slow and time-sucking process. 

Another reason not to stack is that text boxes placed on top of a shape are often not horizontally aligned with the shape. As an example, a text box stacked on top of a shape with the text left aligned is not truly centered by default – the text box must be manually moved to center the text on the shape – ugh! Even if you center the text in the text box, you still have to select both objects and center them to one another. The better solution is to set your text inside the shape and simply center the text – yay!  

When it comes to animation, it might seem easier with two objects, but it’s still two objects. Don’t do this! You can get the same effect with one object. PowerPoint actually allows you to animate text within a shape independently. This means you can get the same effects without the hassle of animating multiple objects. 

Selecting objects can also be difficult when using two elements. When the overlapping textbox is bigger than the shape behind, it’s a little tricky trying to select that back object. You will need to select both, then Shift deselect the top text box in order to modify the back underlying shape (you can also use the selection pane).  

Accessibility is another good reason not to stack a text box on top of a shape. The Office PowerPoint accessibility tools do not work very well with layered content, as these tools have several limitations in identifying stacked objects. As an example, white text on top of a light baby blue shape isn’t seen by the accessibility checker as a flawed low contrast item. PowerPoint looks at a text box with no fill color and sees it essentially in black-and-white and ignores the layered element underneath. This can lead to content being missed by users relying on screen readers. 

In conclusion, managing text within a shape is simply way more efficient. You have a single object to select and work with while designing, your animation and selection panes are less cluttered, line wrapping adjusts automatically when the shape or text size changes, and the list goes on. All of this makes it easier to keep a clean and responsive layout, plus it’s also more accessible. 

-Tips and a big ask, from the TLC Creative Design Team 

If you’ve ever tried to create a numbered list in PowerPoint and wanted to start it at “0”, you’ve likely run into a small (and slightly frustrating) limitation: PowerPoint lets you change the starting number of a numbered list—but only if that number is 1 or higher. Starting at “0”? That’s not allowed!

How to Change the Starting Number in PowerPoint 

1. Highlight the numbered list

2. Right-click and choose “Bullets and Numbering”

3. In the Numbered tab, change the “Start at” value

4. Enter any whole number except “0”

Yep, if you try to enter “0,” the field will snap back to “1”

But Larger Numbers Are Allowed

Side note: a numbered list can start at any number (larger than 0) and will continue the auto numbering from there. For example, PowerPoint makes it easy to update this number list to start at the number 8. 

1. Right-click and choose “Bullets and Numbering”

2. Go to the Numbered tab

3. Change the “Start at” value from “1” to “8”

4. Click OK

Why No Zero?

PowerPoint follows the more traditional formatting logic found in word processing and presentation tools, where lists begin with “1” by default. Unlike coding languages or spreadsheets that often treat “0” as a valid starting index, PowerPoint assumes that users are building lists meant for human consumption, where “1” is the standard starting point. This is disappointing because we have slides that start with “0” occasionally. 

A Workaround, if You Really Want to Start With a Zero

If starting your list with “0” is needed (such as when showing steps in a programming sequence or a timeline), here’s a simple workaround. This workaround does not use PowerPoint’s auto numbering, but it will look exactly the same. 

Manually add bullet/number spacing: 

1. Go to the “Home” tab, then the “Paragraph” section, click on the “Line Spacing” icon, then go to the “Line Spacing Options”… at the bottom of the menu open the “Paragraph” dialog 

2. On the “Indents and Spacing” tab, go to the “Indentation” area 

3. Change the “Before Text” to “0.38”  

4. Change the “Special” section to be “Hanging” and by “0.38” 

5. Click OK 

These settings will mimic the spacing and alignment of a bullet/number list.  

Now start the first line by typing “0”, then hit tab and continue (manually) numbering the full list. The result is a numbered list starting at “0”! 

Depending on the font used and the text size, you may need to adjust the “Before Text” and “Special” settings to space the numbers and text appropriately – just make sure the numbers used in these 2 settings are the same. 

Final Thoughts

While this method does not produce a true numbered list, it does visually replicate one, allowing you to start at “0” without disrupting the layout. It’s a small quirk, but it’s good to know these limitations when you’re trying to get your slides just right. PowerPoint’s list formatting features are powerful, but sometimes a manual tweak is the key to getting the result you need. 

-The TLC Creative Design Team