Jon Moon

Clarity and impact

My articles

I wrote these for email updates, Trade Press, clients and my books.

On clarity

"Desperately seeking clarity" (2 pages, Summer 2009) - how the credit crunch has shown we must put clarity in the exam room and Board room


Tips and thoughts on graphs, tables, bullets

"Time to ban the bullet" (1 page, June 2010)
"Graphs: weapons of mass distraction" (1 page, July 2010)
"Do tables people love, not loathe" (1 page, August 2010)


'Visuals: powerful or pointless' - three short articles

An oft-quoted mantra is: 'we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we see and hear (are you still with me?), 70% of what we discuss, and 80% of what we experience'. Sounds good, huh - even a slide-pimpers’ dream.

My series of one-page articles debunks these stats - and debunks lots of other conventional wisdom on 'visuals'. The articles are from the first half of Chapter 1 of my forthcoming book How to make an impact in presentations (out sometime between Dec '11 and Mar '12).

Part 1: debunking three popular myths on visuals
Part 2: debunking the fourth - and biggest - myth
Part 3: four questions to ask before doing visuals

Various

"Surplus to requirements" (2 page, Spring 2009) - should Universities make a surplus, and if so, how much? If you know anyone that uses the phrase "investing for the future", maybe forward it to them, they might like the bit that starts on the bottom of page 1... (PS I wrote the article for the British University Finance Directors' Group)

"Spot the spin" (1 page, Spring 2009) - how politicians spin statistics, plus two games to help your survive election campaigns: "Ballot Box Bingo" and "Stato Bingo". Click here for a little more on this

"When good information goes bad" (2 page, January 2006) - this is an article on clarity in general and is a bit of a period piece. I wrote it a few years ago for "Accountancy", the trade Journal for accountants