Somewhere right now, someone is hitting Print, picking “6 slides per page” and calling it a handout.
It isn’t. It’s your deck shrunk to the size of a postage stamp, with nobody there to explain it.
Presentation handouts are worth doing, but only when the handout is its own piece of work: written to be read, sized for paper and given out after you’ve finished talking. Here’s how to get it right.
Should you use presentation handouts at all?
Yes, if you want your message to outlive the meeting. A good handout keeps working after you’ve left the room. It reaches people who weren’t there, reminds the people who were, and gives everyone something to forward.
But it’s your call. Plenty of presentations don’t need one, and we’d never tell you a handout is compulsory. The only thing we’d talk you out of is the lazy version: printing the slides and passing them round.
Your slides are not a handout (and your handout is not a slide)
A presentation and a handout do two different jobs. Slides are built to be seen while someone talks. A handout is built to be read when nobody’s talking at all.
Make one file do both and you get a deck that’s too wordy to present and too thin to read. Garr Reynolds, author of *Presentation Zen*, calls this hybrid a “slideument”. Nancy Duarte went the other way with *Slidedocs*: documents built in presentation software but designed to be read, not presented. Both come down to the same rule. Decide which job the file is doing.
We see the double-duty deck all the time. Someone knows the slides will be emailed round afterwards, so every slide gets a paragraph “for context”. Now the audience is reading the screen instead of listening, and the presenter is reading it out to them. Nobody wins.
Your presentation is an experience, a moment in a room. The handout is what carries that moment out the door. They need different things, so build them separately. Let the presentation be made for the room.
Why printed slides make terrible presentation handouts
Printed slides fail as handouts for three reasons: they’re the wrong shape, they’re missing the speaker, and they drag the presentation down with them.
They’re the wrong shape
PowerPoint’s default widescreen slide is 16:9, 33.87 × 19.05 cm. Standard UK paper is A4 portrait, 210 × 297 mm. Print one slide per page, scaled to the width, and it fills roughly a third of the sheet. The rest is white space and a page number.
So people cram them in. Three to a page with lines for notes. Six to a page, where your 24pt body copy prints at about the size of a terms and conditions footnote. A handout should be designed for whatever it’ll be read on, and for most UK businesses that’s A4.
They don’t make sense without you
Good slides are deliberately incomplete. A big number, an image, five words. You supply the rest out loud. That’s why they work in the room, and exactly why they fall apart on paper.
Your handout has no speaker. It needs more copy than the presentation, not less, so it makes sense on its own. Write it for the person who wasn’t in the meeting, because they’ll be reading plenty of the copies: the finance director who sent apologies, the board member it gets forwarded to, the new starter who joins the project in three months.
They make the presentation worse too
When the slides have to double as the handout, they get written for reading. That means more text, smaller type and fewer moments that only land with you in the room. You end up with a mediocre document and a mediocre presentation instead of a strong version of each.
What good presentation handouts look like
A good presentation handout is a separate piece of collateral that works in its own right. When clients ask our print design team for one, it usually takes one of two forms.
The one-pager
A single A4 sheet, or a single-page PDF, with the argument, the numbers that back it up and what happens next. It’s the right call for most pitches, internal updates and conference sessions. Short enough to actually get read, specific enough to be useful.
The leave-behind brochure
A short, designed document for presentations with more riding on them: the big pitch, the investor meeting, the product launch. It carries the whole story, including the case, the proof and the detail you didn’t have time for, written and laid out to be read cover to cover. In print, this is where paper weight, finishes, foiling and embossing earn their keep.
Whichever you choose, the same rules apply:
– Write it to be read, not presented. Full sentences. Headings that say something.
– Make it make sense without you. If a point needs you to explain it, explain it on the page.
– Design it for the format. A4 portrait for print, an A4-shaped PDF for email. Not a 16:9 slide.
– Keep it on brand. It’ll sit on someone’s desk long after your slides have left the screen.
– End with the next step. Who to call, what to sign, where to look. A handout without a call to action is a souvenir.
When to give out presentation handouts: after, not before
Give out presentation handouts at the end. Hand them out at the start and your audience reads ahead while you’re still on slide two.
By then they’ve read your punchline before you’ve delivered it, and they’re flicking pages while you’re trying to hold the room. Handing a document round halfway through is no better. You’ve just scheduled your own interruption.
If someone asks for it up front, tell them it’s coming at the end and they don’t need to take notes. Nobody buys the tour T-shirt before the band’s played.
Printed or PDF? Most handouts get emailed now
More handouts now go out as a PDF in the follow-up email than get printed. Printed handouts still happen at conferences, in boardrooms and in pitches where a physical object makes a point, but digital is the default.
A PDF can do things paper can’t, so make it:
– Make the links clickable. Your website, the case study, the booking page, your email address. Blue underlined text that goes nowhere is a missed opportunity.
– Size it like a document. An A4-proportioned PDF reads properly on a laptop and still prints properly if someone hits Print.
The same thinking applies to remote pitches. A standalone follow-up document, or a self-running version of the presentation, gives anyone who couldn’t make the call something that explains your idea without you.
Presentation handouts FAQs
What is a presentation handout?
A presentation handout is a document you give your audience to support a presentation, usually at the end. The best ones are standalone documents, such as a one-pager or a short brochure, rather than printed copies of the slides.
Should you give out handouts before or after a presentation?
After. Handouts given out at the start get read while you’re talking, so your audience is ahead of you and not listening. Tell people a handout is coming at the end so they don’t need to take notes.
Can I just print my PowerPoint slides as handouts?
You can, since PowerPoint’s Print menu has handout layouts from one to nine slides per page, but it makes a poor handout. Slides are designed to be explained by a speaker, they’re the wrong shape for A4 paper, and they don’t make sense to anyone who missed the presentation.
What size should a presentation handout be?
For UK audiences, A4 portrait (210 × 297 mm), whether you print it or send it as a PDF. Avoid a 16:9 slide-shaped handout. It fills about a third of a printed page and reads awkwardly on screen.
How long should a presentation handout be?
As long as it needs to be to make sense on its own, and no longer. For most presentations that’s a one-pager. For big pitches and investor meetings, a short leave-behind brochure.
What’s the difference between a handout and a leave-behind?
Mostly timing and ambition. A handout is usually given to the audience on the day. A leave-behind is usually a more designed document left with a client or emailed after a pitch. Done properly, both are the same thing: a standalone document that tells your story without you.
Do you always need a presentation handout?
No. It’s your call, and plenty of presentations don’t need one. But if you’re going to leave something behind, make it a proper document rather than printed slides.
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Your slides were made for the room. Give your audience something made for the train home.
Need a leave-behind that keeps selling after you’ve left the room? We design one-pagers, brochures and follow-up documents that make sense without a speaker. Take a look at our print design, or get in touch.
