The Health Literacy Style Manual - Covering Kids & Families

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To enhance readability, choose a clean, uncluttered design and use it consistently. Once the reader accepts your visual invitation, consistent formatting will guide him or her through the document page by page. The friendly design makes this draft application form seem possible to complete. F O R M ATTIN G AN D STYLE | 39
CHOOSING FONTS For readers with limited literacy skills, choose simple and familiar fonts. Fancy, artistic, or cute fonts are distracting, and they call attention to themselves rather than to the message. Too many diff e re n t fonts on the same page can have the same eff e c t . They can make a document look cluttered and create “visual noise.” Usually two fonts per document are plenty. Serif and sans serif fonts Fonts are designed with or without serifs. A serif is a tiny stroke or line placed at the top or bottom of the straight lines that make up letters. In print materials, serif fonts (such as Times New Roman) are easy to read because they’re familiar and because the tiny strokes help the eyes track horizontally across the line of text. Most people agree that serif fonts are the best choice for blocks of text. This is Times New Roman, a serif font. The letters are finished off with decorative strokes. This font is easier on the eyes and good for blocks of text. Sans serif fonts do not have the tiny strokes. Because of that, a couple of paragraphs or a page in a sans serif font will look very vertical and will be harder to read. But sans serif fonts look streamlined and are good for titles and headings. They complement and provide contrast to the text font, and this helps the title and headings stand out. This is Arial, a sans serif font. There are no tiny strokes at the tops or bottoms of the letters. This font is good for headings but not so good for blocks of text. 40 | THE HEALTH LITERAC Y STYLE MA NUAL
Page 1 and 2: The Health Literacy Style Manual Pr
Page 3 and 4: WR I T I N G 1 7 Write in plain lan
Page 5 and 6: C overing the cost Small-scale test
Page 7 and 8: and improving problem materials, an
Page 9 and 10: WHO ARE YOUR READERS? Nearly half o
Page 11 and 12: HOW CLIENTS “READ” HEALTH INFOR
Page 13 and 14: This is a “before and after” of
Page 15 and 16: help the rest of the team understan
Page 17 and 18: This example of a poster, like that
Page 19 and 20: CR E AT E A LO O K A N D F E E L Al
Page 21 and 22: u n f o r t u n a t e l y, explaini
Page 23 and 24: 16 | THE HEALTH LITERAC Y STYLE MA
Page 25 and 26: vocabularies. Using common, everyda
Page 27 and 28: The left column shows words that ar
Page 29 and 30: B u r e a u c ratic language and le
Page 31 and 32: USE THE ACTIVE VOICE Write in the a
Page 33 and 34: Longer sentences are not necessaril
Page 35 and 36: Here is the revised notice. US E A
Page 37 and 38: You can improve the readability of
Page 39 and 40: This notice contains important info
Page 41 and 42: LINK NEW INFORMATION TO OLD Readers
Page 43 and 44: OF F E R H E L P TO R E A D E R S M
Page 45: CHOOSE A CLEAN DESIGN The first pag
Page 49 and 50: PRINT SIZE The point size of type (
Page 51 and 52: LAYOUT To lay out a page is to arra
Page 53 and 54: When the alignment is right-justifi
Page 55 and 56: CONTRAST Text is easiest to read wh
Page 57 and 58: • I t a l i c s . The contrast be
Page 59 and 60: The blue on this brochure (written
Page 61 and 62: H e a d i n g s Headings and subhea
Page 63 and 64: Be careful to write an introductory
Page 65 and 66: • Make them illustrative. Visual
Page 67 and 68: • D o n ’t print over a graphic
Page 69 and 70: This form (still in draft when we r
Page 71 and 72: The small print and difficult vocab
Page 73 and 74: Folding and mailing When you’re p
Page 75 and 76: application itself. Don’t begin t
Page 77 and 78: • Avoid using the word “optiona
Page 79 and 80: • Many readers have no context fo
Page 81 and 82: PROBLEM CHARTS AND TABLES Forms and
Page 83 and 84: This application doesn’t avoid cr
Page 85 and 86: Income charts Income charts are par
Page 87 and 88: 80 | THE HEALTH LITERAC Y STYLE MA
Page 89 and 90: d i ff e rent point of view. But fo
Page 91 and 92: a little more, and the re s e a rch
Page 93 and 94: Small-scale testing is a significan
Page 95 and 96: p rompt the participant if she’s
Page 97 and 98:
90 | THE HEALTH LITERAC Y STYLE MA
Page 99 and 100:
TRA N S L AT I N G I S A S P E C I
Page 101 and 102:
When your quality assurance person,
Page 103 and 104:
96 | THE HEALTH LITERAC Y STYLE MA
Page 105:
For more information For more detai
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The Health Literacy Style Manual - Covering Kids & Families

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