On the weekend, I did home renovations that required the use of a spray can of foam insulation. And while my eyes, with glasses on, aren’t that weak, it sure seemed like it. I could barely read the instructions written on the can, and persevered only because I couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

Which takes me to the point of this week’s tip: If you have aging Baby Boomers (or older readers) among those who read your writing, choose your fonts wisely.

As the population ages, more and more readers will find it harder and harder to see the words. But, we can help. And, that’s important if we want them to respond to our message.

Let’s start with fonts, or typefaces as they’re also known. Make them a decent size, say nothing smaller than 10 point in most cases. And, a 12 point-type often works even better. Of course, size also depends on the nature of the type face, and we’ll get to that next. But, for now, consider relative sizes, too. 12 point Times Roman, for example, is smaller than 12 point Palatino, which in turn is smaller than 12 point Bookman.

Whether you use a serif (with little lines on the end of each stroke), or sans-serif (which means no lines), will depend on the application. Generally speaking, if you write something that will be read on a computer screen, use a sans-serif font (like Arial, Verdana. or Helvetica) for your body text.

On the other hand, if your document will be read from paper, then a serif font (like Times, Palatino, or Roman) will work better for body text.

Let’s remember, too, that lower case with occasional upper case letters works better than all upper case — and in all situations. That’s because we recognize words by their shape more quickly than the actual letters within them. An all-upper case word makes a rectangle, lower case words make more distinctive shapes. For example, go back to ‘make’ and ‘more’ in the previous sentence, to see this distinction.

On a related note, use proportional fonts rather than mono-spaced fonts. In mono-spaced fonts, all letters are the same width, while proportional fonts letters vary. For example, note the difference in widths between ‘n’ and ‘m’ in a proportional font.

Finally, and as we’ve discussed before, break paragraphs frequently. Many short paragraphs, especially if they’re separated by lots of white space, read more easily than a few long paragraphs.