Keynote for iPad: Getting the Type Right
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
In general, I think that you should write your presentation before you ever start working with Keynote. Even writing your topics for each slide on a piece of paper first will help. Focusing on your presentation’s text, rather than the text on your individual slides, will lead you to create better presentations.
But sooner or later, you will need to work with the text on your slides, and that’s what this chapter is all about. For this chapter, at least, I’ll assume that you’ll be entering text directly onto slides.
Keynote showcases iOS’s superior text handling, layout, and display abilities, and you’ve got good control over the appearance and style of text within Keynote.
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to enter text on slides, style that text as you wish, change the alignment and spacing of text, work with indents on slides, save time when you’re setting text styles, and avoid embarrassing spelling errors.
Adding Title and Body Text
The first slide in your presentation is by default the Title, Subtitle, & Photo slide (though you can delete and replace it
if you want), which contains three pieces of information: the title of the presentation; a subtitle, where you put your name
and company affiliation; and a photo placeholder, to illustrate the overall topic of your presentation 
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In Keynote, all text must be in text boxes. A text box defines the boundaries of the text. If you have more text than the text box can contain (which depends on the size of the text box and the size and style of the text within the box), Keynote first shrinks the text size, trying to make the extra text fit. If you persist in adding text to the text box, text will be cut off, and Keynote will display a plus icon at the bottom of the text box to let you know that you are missing some text. Text automatically wraps inside text boxes.
Most of the time, you’ll use the text boxes provided on the slide layout that you have chosen for your slide, but you can also add your own text boxes to a particular slide, as discussed in the next section.
To add title and body text:
- Create a new presentation file, and apply a theme from the “Choose a Theme” view.
Keynote creates a new slide based on the Title, Subtitle, & Photo slide layout. The new slide will contain placeholder text for its text boxes, which say, “Double-tap to edit,” as shown in
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- Double-tap in the title box, which usually contains larger sized text than the subtitle.
An insertion point will begin blinking in the title box.
- Type in your title using the on-screen keyboard, or, if you have one, an external keyboard.
- When you’re done entering the title, tap outside the title box to deselect it, or double-tap in the subtitle box to begin
entering your subtitle.
You’ll know Keynote’s ready for you to enter text in the subtitle box when you see the insertion point blinking in that box.
- Type in your subtitle
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- Tap outside the subtitle box to deselect it.
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