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Organisational health literacy standards and toolkit

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Written information

Written information is clear, simple and easy to understand. Written information meets the needs of our communities. This includes online and multimedia resources.

Introduction
The average reading age of adults is 9 to 11 years old. We do not always write like this. Health literate organisations should make sure all written information is clear, simple and easy to understand. They should make sure written information meets people’s needs.

The tools and resources on this page will help you to write simply. Some will help you to work out the reading age of your information. This will make sure it meets the needs of your communities.
General writing guidelines, checklists and resources to help staff create written information that meetings health literacy standards
Health literacy editing checklist
A checklist for producing written information that is clear, simple and easy to understand.

Writing for health literacy overview
A general guide on how the North East and North Cumbria health literacy team write. It is based on the health literacy editing checklist.

BETTY - a framework for writing simply
A guide to writing simply based on a framework called BETTY.

Health literacy playlist
This playlist has lots of short videos explaining parts of the health literacy editing checklist in more detail.

Introducing a health literacy review into your leaflets process: a how-to guide
This guide shows you how you can introduce a health literacy review into your leaflets process.
Style guides and tips
Full writing style guide
This style guide will help you to make sure your written information is clear, simple and easy to understand.

Quick guide for leaflets
A quick guide on how to write patient information that is clear, simple, and at a reading age of 11 or under.

Letters style guide and phrase bank
This style guide gives you some general advice and guidance to help to make your letters clear, simple and easy to understand. The phrase bank gives some helpful suggestions of how to write commonly used phrases in a simple way and at a reading age of 11 years old and under.

Quick guide to writing and updating webpages
A quick guide to help to make sure that written information on your webpages is clear, simple, easy to understand and at a reading age of 11 years old or under.

How to edit tricky sentences
Tips and ideas for how to change complicated sentences to make them easier to read.

Passive voice resource
Tips and ideas for how to change complicated sentences to make them easier to read.

The A-Z of NHS health writing
This is part of the NHS content guide. It tells you which words and phrases the NHS prefers to use, based on what people find easiest to understand.

The NHS content style guide
This is a guide for anyone creating content for the NHS. It will help make things clear and consistent across all NHS services.

Writing guidance from GOV.UK
This is part of GOV.UK content and publishing guidance. It will help you design clear and helpful content.

Plain English
The Plain English Campaign - how to write in plain English (PDF)
Useful guidance to help you to write in plain English.

The Plain English Campaign - the A-Z of alternative words (PDF)
A list of simpler alternatives for some commonly used words and phrases.

The Plain Language Thesaurus
Simple alternatives to medical terms and phrases that we often use.

The Plain English Campaign - free guides
A link to free guides from the Plain English campaign. These will help you to write simply.

Readability
Video - Measuring readability in Microsoft Word
This 3-minute video will show you how to measure the readability of your document in Microsoft Word. Readability is about how easy it is to read and understand a piece of text.

Measuring readability guide
This guide will help you to measure the readability of your document. Readability is about how easy it is to read and understand a piece of text.

Top tips for lowering the reading grade of your writing
Use these top tips to help you to lower the reading age of your writing. Aim for a reading age of 11 years old or younger.

Flesch-Kincaid reading grade information (PowerPoint slides)
This document tells you what the Flesch-Kincaid reading grade is.

Flesch-Kincaid reading grade information (Word)
This document tells you what the Flesch-Kincaid reading grade is.

If you would like to get in touch and find out more,
please email:
[email protected]

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Useful links:

Health literacy geodata tool 
This tool tells you the percentage of adults likely to struggle to understand health information containing words or words and numbers in your area.

Health literacy training
A link to free health literacy training sessions for the North East and North Cumbria. Look for:

- E-learning: How to write simply
- Health literacy: how to write simply
- Writing for health literacy: beyond the basics

Engagement and involving people section
A link to the Engagement and involving people section of this toolkit. You will find useful resources to help you to make sure written information is developed with and tested by the people it is written for

NHS medical document readability tool

This tool measures the reading age of your document. It shows you some things that might be making your document harder to understand.

Hemingway app
This app is like the NHS Medical Document Readability tool. It highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common mistakes.

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Contact

0191 535 4339[email protected]

Pemberton House, Colima Avenue Sunderland Enterprise Park Sunderland, SR5 3XB

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