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10 things people communicating with older people should never do (18 Jun 15)

Don’t let design waste your time, pots of money, and, most importantly, a golden opportunity to communicate a valuable message


Some time ago I reviewed some newsletters sent out by community workers.

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1

Comment by Gill Dundee Carers Centre — 10 May 12 at 11:36:28

Useful tips Rod but I'd have to disagree with number 7. According to Plain English guidelines, it's better to use left alignment rather than justified text as keeping the ends straight often creates irregular spaces between words that make the whole sentence hard to read. In some programmes, justifying text automatically creates hyphenation, which is even more difficult to read. Justifying text so that every paragraph is a straight, neat box is pretty much the same as making your font block capitals. As older people and those with literacy issues use shape to help them read, in this case, neat is bad and ragged is good!

2

Comment by Clive Kent County Council — 25 Nov 14 at 15:29:22

To add to point number seven, I'd say, "avoid the use of italics or underlined text". The reason is the same as the reason why capitalism is a capital offence. Italics and underlined text distort the shape of the words.

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