Most slide titles are labels: “Results”, “Market”, “Q3”. They tell the audience what the slide is about, but not what to think. An action title states the takeaway in one sentence — so even someone skimming gets the message.
| Label | Action title |
|---|---|
| Results | Teams file reports three times faster |
| Q3 revenue | Revenue grew 38% — almost all from existing customers |
| Competition | Every alternative still needs a laptop on site |
| Next steps | We need a decision on pricing by March 1 |
How to write one
- Look at the slide and ask: so what? The answer is your title.
- Write it as a full sentence, with a verb.
- Keep it to two lines at most. If it’s longer, the slide is doing two jobs — split it.
- Check that the body of the slide proves the title. If it doesn’t, change one of them.
The skim test
Read only the titles of your deck, top to bottom. They should tell the whole story on their own. If they don’t, the order is wrong or a step is missing — and no amount of design will fix that.
Try this prompt
A 7-slide quarterly update for our board. Use full-sentence titles that state each slide's point. Cover revenue, churn, hiring, the product roadmap, risks and the decisions we need from them.
