Poster sessions at biomedical meetings: Design and presentation

As an alternative to reading a paper, biomedical scientists can make their first public communication of research results at a professional meeting via a poster. Observation of posters at the 1983 annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology shows that the most effective posters plan spacing, color, and depth to guide the reader through the intended sequence. The informal spoken interaction between poster presenter and passerby, focused on scientific topics, requires a sophisticated grasp of a specific type of conversational interaction, including the ability to comprehend illocutionary force of utterances.