Includes bibliographical references and index.

About health literacy -- Assessing health literacy -- Assessing readability with grade level formulas -- Business side of health literacy -- Communicating when patients feel scared, sick, and overwhelmed -- Confirming understanding : feedback from interviews, focus groups, and usability testing -- Confirming understanding : teach-back technique -- Decision aids and shared decision-making -- Document design -- Environment of care : entrance, questions, signs, and Feng Shui -- Ethics of simplicity -- Forms and other "reading-to-do" documents -- General public : talking with patients about what they learn from the media -- Humor and healing -- Interpreters and translations -- Jargon, acronyms, and other troublesome words -- Know your audience : children and youth -- Know your audience : culture and language -- Know your audience : emotions and cognition -- Know your audience : hearing loss -- Know your audience : literacy -- Know your audience : older adults -- Know your audience : vision problems -- Listening and speaking -- Metaphors, similes, and analogies -- Numeracy -- Organizational efforts : health literacy at the community, state, and national levels -- Plain language -- Question-asking -- Regulatory and legal language -- Stories -- Teaching and learning -- Technology : audio podcasts -- Technology : blogs and other social media -- Technology : email and text messaging -- Technology : interactive multimedia -- Universal design in communication -- Visuals -- Writing for the web -- X-tras -- You : empathy and humanity -- Zest and pizzazz.