Next Slide Please
Next Slide Please
[A list of 12 quotes is given. Above is a large header with a question, and then a description, before the quotes follows. The text above the quotes is centered:] Did you know? Transcripts of famous quotes often leave out the slideshow instructions. Here’s how these lines actually sounded:
[The first six quotations, are written so they fit around an image of Ronald Reagan standing next to his slide showing six segments of the Berlin Wall. A large arrow points down on to the middle segment of the wall. There is something on the ground in front of the wall, could be puddles or debris. The image is to the right, and the two first and last quote goes above and below the image, while the other three stops to the left of the image:] "Give me liberty or give me—Next slide, please—death!" "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down—Next slide, please—this wall." "It was the best of times—Next slide, please—It was the worst of times." "We have nothing to fear but—Next slide, please—fear itself." "To be or—Next slide, please—not to be, that is the question." "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art—Next slide, please—more lovely and—Next slide, please—more temperate."
[Below those five quotations is three more quotes to the right of an image showing Winston Churchill standing next to his slide showing a beach. The sun and three small clouds are over the ocean which has white waves on the black water. Ponytail is sitting under a parasol to the left, Cueball is sitting on the sand to the right with a drink in his hands, and behind him is a kid running after a large beach-ball.] "We shall fight—Next slide, please—on the beaches, we shall fight on—Next slide, please—the landing grounds..." "Read my lips—Next slide, please—no new taxes." "That's one small step for man—Next slide, please—one giant leap for mankind."
[Below this picture is the last three quotations, without any pictures:] "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears! Next slide, please. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of—Next slide, please—a good fortune, must be in want of—Next slide, please—a wife." "Veni, vidi—Velim, pictura proxima—vici."

This comic presumes that many famous quotes are actually excerpts from slideshow presentations , and the text they were reading was split across multiple slides. Splitting sentences across multiple slides can often be a useful tool if there are images accompanying it, which could explain the specific placement of many of "next slide, please" comments. For example, in the quote "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," one can imagine the speaker starting with a slide that showed the prosperity of some people then, in the middle of the sentence, switching to a slide of many people's destitution. When using images this way, it is often better for timing purposes to have control of your own slides. However, Randall claims that, in these speeches, the person making the speech wasn't controlling their slide presentation, so they had to ask the operator to go to the next slide. A common way to ask this is to say "next slide, please", but these requests would have been edited out of the historical transcripts. The comic imagines the places where the slide breaks might have been, and inserts that request.
Most of these quotes are drawn from speeches, which could conceivably have been accompanied by slides or other stage directions ("pause for laughter"), but the list is quite ridiculous as it includes works of literature, where the reader is the one who turns pages as necessary, and speeches from periods of history, such as the American Revolution and Caesar's Veni, vidi, vici speech, which predated slide projectors [ citation needed ] . Even in the quotations that take place in an era with slide projectors, every single one is an instance where the speaker was, quite famously, recorded live — said recordings would show there were in fact no edits, and certainly not any instructions for a slide projector operator. See details in the table below, including the quote in the title text.
The phrase "Next slide, please" is perhaps in a sweet-spot of utility and performance. A rehearsed presentation, with speaker and 'slide handler' working with a tight script, could probably do without off-stage prompting at all, or the better lecturers with an oft-repeated talk could set it all on timings knowing they can keep the changes synchronised with their speech, or vice-versa. But when a cue is necessary, an unambiguous signal should be used, and an audible 'clicker' (or a small and briefly flashed light) has been used historically, especially with pre-electronic slide-shows where the slide-operator at the back of an auditorium needed to clearly discern the intent of the person at the lectern.
In the United Kingdom, England's Chief Medical Officer caused some amusement on social media with the constant use of the phrase in coronavirus presentations, culminating in the availability of many mugs and cards with his image and this slogan on, and a campaign [1] to purchase an automatic clicker for him instead.
[A list of 12 quotes is given. Above is a large header with a question, and then a description, before the quotes follows. The text above the quotes is centered:] Did you know? Transcripts of famous quotes often leave out the slideshow instructions. Here’s how these lines actually sounded:
[The first six quotations, are written so they fit around an image of Ronald Reagan standing next to his slide showing six segments of the Berlin Wall. A large arrow points down on to the middle segment of the wall. There is something on the ground in front of the wall, could be puddles or debris. The image is to the right, and the two first and last quote goes above and below the image, while the other three stops to the left of the image:] "Give me liberty or give me—Next slide, please—death!" "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down—Next slide, please—this wall." "It was the best of times—Next slide, please—It was the worst of times." "We have nothing to fear but—Next slide, please—fear itself." "To be or—Next slide, please—not to be, that is the question." "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art—Next slide, please—more lovely and—Next slide, please—more temperate."
[Below those five quotations is three more quotes to the right of an image showing Winston Churchill standing next to his slide showing a beach. The sun and three small clouds are over the ocean which has white waves on the black water. Ponytail is sitting under a parasol to the left, Cueball is sitting on the sand to the right with a drink in his hands, and behind him is a kid running after a large beach-ball.] "We shall fight—Next slide, please—on the beaches, we shall fight on—Next slide, please—the landing grounds..." "Read my lips—Next slide, please—no new taxes." "That's one small step for man—Next slide, please—one giant leap for mankind."
[Below this picture is the last three quotations, without any pictures:] "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears! Next slide, please. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of—Next slide, please—a good fortune, must be in want of—Next slide, please—a wife." "Veni, vidi—Velim, pictura proxima—vici."
