I have worked a couple of years as an expert for\u00a0The Finnish Centre for Easy-to-Read. When I started I thought I already knew everything I needed, since I have popularized texts throughout my working life.\u00a0What an awakening I’ve had! I constantly learn new things\u00a0from the Centre\u2019s experienced professionals.<\/p>\n
One important thing has been how to design an easy-to-read layout. At first, I used the recommended line length of 55 to 60 characters. However, an experienced colleague suggested even shorter lines.<\/p>\n
For example, this line has 43 characters<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I learned, with some effort, to use shorter lines with only one phrase or sentence in the line. Even official documents began to resemble a poem.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, my font size became larger. Now I use Arial 14 point in the body text. I think it is the smallest size which is easily read by older people. It was educational to watch an 85-year-old trying to read a twenty-page guideline from the city \u2013 in an 11-point font. That didn’t go well.<\/p>\n General layout instructions are the same as in other texts. People read popular fonts fastest. Lowercase letters are easier than capitals. Contrast is best when using black text on a white background. The left edge of the column is even, the right edge ragged. Highlighting should be used only with caution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have worked a couple of years as an expert for\u00a0The Finnish Centre for Easy-to-Read. When I started I thought I already knew everything I needed, since I have popularized texts throughout my working life.\u00a0What an awakening I’ve had! I constantly learn new things\u00a0from the Centre\u2019s experienced professionals. One important thing has been how to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-english-en","7":"category-wordoftheweek-en","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2787,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions\/2787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}