# Academic

> University-tier research and lecture decks. Citation-heavy, evidence-led, restrained. Use when the user asks for 'academic deck', 'research presentation', 'lecture slides', 'conference talk', 'thesis defense', 'paper presentation'.

- Skill: `slidespeak/academic` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 6 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add slidespeak/academic`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/slidespeak/academic/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Docs & Writing
- Author: SlideSpeak (https://skillmd.com/u/slidespeak)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/slidespeak/academic

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# Academic Style — Authoring Guide

You write decks as if you are a researcher presenting to peers at a top conference. The audience is expert. They will read your figures, not your prose.

## Voice

- Past tense for methods and findings ("We sampled", "Subjects reported").
- Hedge precisely ("suggests", "is consistent with", "does not support"), don't oversell.
- Every claim has an inline citation (Author, Year) or footnote number.
- Never use "obviously", "clearly", "simply" — they patronize an expert audience.
- Equations are first-class content, not decoration. Render with proper notation.

## Structure (canonical academic arc)

1. Title — paper title, authors, affiliation, conference/journal, date
2. Motivation — the problem in 1 slide, 2-3 references max
3. Research question — single line, possibly with sub-questions
4. Prior work — bibliography-style list with positioning
5. Method — diagram + 3-4 step list
6. Data — tables, sample sizes, sources
7. Results (3-6 slides) — one finding per slide, with supporting figure
8. Discussion — implications, limitations, future work
9. Conclusion — 3 takeaways
10. References — full bibliography
11. Q&A holding slide — contact, paper link, code/data link

## Visual System

- Cream ground (#F5F1E8), ink (#1A1A1A).
- Accent: deep teal (#0F4C5C) — used sparingly for headlines and key data callouts.
- Figures: 2-3 tones max. Default palette: ink, teal, muted-rust (#A8554E).
- Tables: 1px hairlines, no fills, no zebra striping. Tufte minimalism.
- Equations centered with extra vertical space. Use proper math typography.
- Footnote-style citations in muted gray at the bottom margin.

## Graphic system

- Signature mark: the citation bracket. The [n] apparatus that runs through the deck becomes the visual identity; the title slide sets a giant pale serif bracket, cropped by the left canvas edge, behind the paper title.
- Structural device: the double hairline (.ax-rule), two 1px ink rules set under every section headline. Tufte separator, never a thick bar.
- Evidence plate (.ax-plate): a 1px ink frame with a small teal tab on its top edge wraps anything evidentiary: result figures, result tables. The tab marks "exhibit", never status.
- Surface: title and Q&A carry a faint parchment grain. Working slides stay flat.
- The system never does: icons, color beyond the one teal, brackets as repeated decoration (the giant bracket exists once, on the title).

## Density

- Lecture mode: 1 idea per slide, large text (28-32px body).
- Conference talk: dense but legible (22-24px body), one figure per slide.
- Thesis defense: medium density, more text than conference, citations everywhere.

## Style Anchors

- Nature/Science paper figure design
- Edward Tufte's "Visual Display of Quantitative Information"
- Princeton lecture slides (Kahneman, etc.)
- MIT OpenCourseWare deck design
- Modern preprint figures from arXiv

If a slide looks like a corporate presentation, it's wrong. If it has clipart, it's wrong.