2470: Next Slide Please

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Next Slide Please

Title text: "I have nothing to offer but blood--next slide, please--toil--next slide, please--tears, and--next slide, please--sweat."

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a SLIDESHOW WITH -- NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE -- FAMOUS QUOTES ON IT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic presumes that many famous quotes are actually excerpts from slideshow presentations, and the text they were reading was split across multiple slides. The person making the speech wasn't operating the slide projector, so they had to ask the operator to go to the next slide. The common way to ask this is to say "next slide, please", but these 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 grows more ridiculous as it continues by including works of literature, where the reader is the one who turns pages as necessary, and then speeches from periods of history which predated slide projectors.

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.

Single words might be more efficient, such as "Next", "Slide" or "Please" on their own, but occasionally could crop up in the rest of their patter, unrelated to a desired change. (It is a comedy staple that a person who was without an expected 'clicker' would actually resort to saying "Click", with or without later confusion when they say something that sounds like they intended an advance.)

Two word signals (e.g. "Next slide", "Next, please" or "Slide, please") might suffice to be clear but sound a bit sharp, or even rude and condescending to the 'floor staff', devaluing the tacked on politeness. Overly long phrases, such as "Thank you, Mr Hargreaves, could you put the next image, if you would be so kind", are not unknown but indicative of an inexperienced yet amicable (or else supercilious) presenter, and would present greater distractions to the audience if used consistently for many instances of prompting.

While still suffering from repetition, and the apparent sincerity of politeness may have worn thinner through overuse, it seems that these three words have been honed in on (at least in the anglosphere) as a commonly expected phrasing.

The further test of the orator's character is now when a change is missed, accidentally doubled, the prepared sequence is subtly digressed from the talk or an audience comment requires reversal to prior material. At this point communications between the podium and off-stage become vastly more improvisational, dependent upon the situation encountered. If the audience is 'lucky', the exchange necessitates a full dialogue, with different joys depending upon how much of the non-presenter's half of the discussion can be heard as resolution or resignment is attained. None of the comic's examples go this far but the possibilities of what they might have entailed, in each case, is easily imagined.

Quote	Attribution	Context
"Give me liberty or give me—Next slide, please—death!"	Patrick Henry, at the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, as part of the revolutionary war against Great Britain.
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down—Next slide, please—this wall."	Ronald Reagan, Berlin Wall Speech (1987).
"It was the best of times—Next slide, please—It was the worst of times."	A Tale of Two Cities, novel by Charles Dickens.	At the current pace, the intro would have 13 "Next slide, please" instances.
"We have nothing to fear but—Next slide, please—fear itself."	Inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.
"To be or—Next slide, please—not to be, that is the question."	From the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Act III, Scene i.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art—Next slide, please—more lovely and—Next slide, please—more temperate."	Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.	A sonnet is a type of love poem, and it requires rhyming and pacing. The inclusion of "Next slide, please" is breaking the poetic flow, as well as unbalancing the length of lines, making it unpredictable when a rhyme is supposed to occur.
"We shall fight—Next slide, please—on the beaches, we shall fight on—Next slide, please—the landing grounds..."	Winston Churchill, We shall fight on the beaches speech.	4 June 1940, after the disastrous first weeks of the battle of France Churchill had to acknowledge a military disaster but to convene confidence in victory and will to fight.
"Read my lips—Next slide, please—no new taxes."	George H. W. Bush, spoken at 1988 Republican National Convention
"That's one small step for man—Next slide, please—one giant leap for mankind."	Neil Armstrong, when he stepped off the Apollo 11 lunar module and onto the surface of the Moon.	Normally would be proof of a fake moon landing, although Neil Armstrong strong insisted that the speech be made on location.[citation needed] The positioning of the "next slide, please" was placed at the intended comma, although there was also a small gap within "one giant" which could also be a potential placement in the audio clip.
"Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears! Next slide, please. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."	From the play Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, Act III, Scene ii.	Takes place after Julius Caesar suffered a few stab wounds in Act III, scene i. If it were a presentation, the pictures would need to be created between scenes, although the play implies there would barely be enough time in response to a recent event.
"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."	Intro to Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen.
"Veni, vidi—Velim, pictura proxima—vici."	Julius Caesar, in a letter after defeating Pharnaces II (47 BC). Literally, "I came, I saw—Please, next picture—I conquered." - it seems to fit nicely into the alliteration.	Caesar used this phrase to refer to a swift, conclusive victory at the Battle of Zela.
"I have nothing to offer but blood--next slide, please--toil--next slide, please--tears, and--next slide, please--sweat." (title text)	Winston Churchill, 'Blood, toil, tears and sweat speech.	From 1940, shortly after he became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom when asking for a vote of confidence in the new all-party (unity) cabinet.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Text at the center:]

Did you know?

Transcripts of famous quotes often

leave out the slideshow instructions.

Here’s the line actually sounded:

[Below showing a list of quotations, with Ronald Reagan standing next to a slide showing the Berlin Wall to the right of the text.]

"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 showing another list of quotations, with Winston Churchill standing next to a slide showing a beach to the left of the text.]

"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."

"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."

Trivia

• The Blood, toil, tears and sweat speach was already the topic of 1148: Nothing to Offer

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

What the hell was Randall been doing for the past week that made this comic come to mind? He must have attended the world's worst seminar. 172.69.69.74 23:32, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

He couldn't have, he's been banned from them all. Danish (talk) 23:53, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Well in my company right now it is even worse with "next slide please" when people share a presentation as they cannot use gestures or something like that to signal the person controlling the slideshow. So I took it initaially not as a jab at seminars/conferences/etc. but online meetings. --Lupo (talk) 06:05, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Here in the UK, it is 'famous' from the COVID Briefings from Downing Street (not to further drag this into the Pandemic set of comics, of course) where it just looks like they couldn't afford a 'clicker' for (each?) expert/politician bringing visuals to the press conference. (Then they spent millions on a new 'Presidential-style briefing room', but no idea if they'd still need to 'NSP' off-podium due to it being abandoned before it got used.) Which makes for some unintentional satire.

((But I admit I laughed most for the Latin insertion, regardless of 141.101.98.94's comment below.)) 141.101.98.30 09:47, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm picturing this comic not just as computer slides, but also as birthday cards - those that have a message on the outside and a twist when you open the card. 172.68.102.181 00:45, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

I was confused about why the "next slide" for "Veni, Vidi, Vici" was in Latin but not "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, etc". Then I remembred the latter was actually from Shakespeare. GreatWyrmGold (talk) 04:54, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Pretty sure that in the last one "pictura proxima" should be in the accusative case, as the object of an implied verb "da" (give). As it stands, it means "please, there is a next slide" which is weird. 141.101.98.94 07:46, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Velim is closer to "I would like" the colloquial way a roman would say please is "amabo te" (I will love you) what's weird is that there's a comma splice. This should be picturam proxima velim; "I would like the next picture". Although, giving it some more thought it's probably intentionally done to keep the alliteration while also being just as stilted; "I Came. I Saw. I Would Like, the next picture. I Conquered." Imagine someone reading that with the same tone an inflection.--Lackadaisical (talk) 20:57, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

"proxima" seems misplaced: that's "nearest" not next, like Proxima Centauri. Probably should have used "postera" instead.

Proxima can also mean next as in "the next in a sequence" and picturam postera seems a little odd to me, I know it also means next but it doesn't seem like it would be used in this context. In a way it seems later in the sequence than proxima, as if you are saying "the slide after the next slide" --Lackadaisical (talk) 15:55, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Shall we add the fact that Winston Churchill's speech is also referenced in 1148? Kvarts314 (talk) 07:48, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes. Done. --Lupo (talk) 08:09, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

On Churchill's (other) quote, the third-column suggests the 'beeches' should be either Dunkirk or Normandy/other Allied landings. But at that point in time it was expected that, France having been effectively los, it would imminently be an Axis landing on British soil (that did not happen, except for the Channel Islands). The beeches of Britain; the landing grounds of (alongside the aforementioned amphibious options) paratroopers and/or gliders; conflict in fields, in towns and either strategic or guerilla resistance fighting from the geological high ground.

The image he was trying to convey would be the beeches probably not too dissimilar to the merry 'resort' depiction (sharing with fishing and shipping ports a propensity of not being too difficult to gain a physically useful beach-head, once opposition had been suppressed, rather than cliffs, marshes, etc), which the images from the interbellum would have been recognisably similar to the 'joke' slide (though probably in sepia, or hand-colourised).

Of course, all these places would by then be well on the way to being studded with tank-traps, landmines, barbed wire and sandbagged/pillboxed defensive positions, and whatever other emplacements the engineers could devise. But compatively few non-locals would have been to the sea-side between the prior September and the pre-Summer months as the situation had drastically worsened (and the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1940/etc reshaped life), so the average listener probably would still harbour memories of their experiences as holidaymakers and only be exposed to select patriotically-framed newsreel footage of how the plucky coastdwellers were 'doing their bit' to help secure the nation, For The Duration.

Just to insert some reality into this, for those who at this point in history had both less or more conflict on their home soil. Obviously the image of Der Mauer is fairly accurate to the real thing (or at least the bits that I saw, and just one of the layers-in-depth) but I get the impression that most of the indicated imminent slides are (at best) clip-arty/figurative illustrations.

The "blood", "tears" and "sweat" might be easier to literally show than "fear (itself)", etc, but I can't imagine they'd be too much more sophisticated than a generic photostock of fairly abstract scenarios merely tagged as portraying the bodily fluids concerned. ;) 141.101.98.38 02:14, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Just for the record they actually had slide projectors during the Civil War. There's beautiful photographs and film negatives from that Era. Some of them are even in color using a method where colored lenses are placed in front of the camera and multiple pictures are taken. 172.69.68.167 18:49, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Should we be using emdash, endash, or double-hyphen? The alt text uses double-hyphen, but if the rest were put into a slide-show, presumably Powerpoint, they would be converted to emdash, right? 21:02, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Wow! all these people throughout history have chosen terrible points to place their slide transitions: all mid-sentence.172.69.71.178 16:09, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Regarding fake moon landing, I remember a comics (probably not XKCD, though) where the landing was totally staged ... but still filmed on moon, next to big city. -- Hkmaly (talk) 00:45, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Everyone knows that because of the threat of Moon Nazis, they had to use a special filter when they filmed them in the desert... of Mars! 141.101.98.30 02:21, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

One that kind of makes sense in my opinion, is, "So you have chosen -- next slide, please -- DEATH!" 172.69.35.211 00:50, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

The title text maybe a pun, since the word 'slide' could also refer to a microscope slide, which is often a square glass piece used to bear the sample we want to examine. send by Temporal 162.158.92.208 05:34, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Are there any other comics with Latin text? ConscriptGuide (talk) 22:45, 12 August 2024 (UTC)