WRITING READABLE TEXTS:

EKARV'S THEORY

Margareta Ekarv developed her theory while writing exhibition texts for the Swedish Postal Museum. She based her method on experience gained during an earlier commission to write books for adult literacy classes.

Observing how museum visitors read texts - often in poor light, while standing up, and in a distracting, sometimes noisy environment - she recognised similar difficulties of concentration and comprehension to those experienced by people with low literacy skills. She experimented with the very simple format of the books to express the much more complicated information contained in the museum exhibition.

Ekarv recommends a structured and organic style of writing (box 2). She encourages the use of words `to give a new, deeper dimension to our visual experience' (Ekarv, 1987). She emphasises the importance of close co-operation between the writer, curator and designer of the exhibition, so that each understands the others' objectives and the texts become an organic part of the whole display.

EVALUATION OF THE EKARV METHOD

Swedish writer Margareta Ekarv believes it is possible to write museum texts, which are so easy and attractive that readers will both, enjoy and learn from them. Recent evaluations of her method by Jennifer Sabine at Swansea Museum and Elizabeth Gilniore at Nature in Art have endorsed most of her claims and shown a positive response from museum visitors.

SWANSEA MUSEUM

Jennifer Sabine used Ekarv's method to write texts for a new Egyptology gallery and evaluated the results for her MA dissertation at the University of Leicester.

THEORY INTO PRACTICE

The new gallery at Swansea Museum contains an Egyptian mummy and a coffin, which after over 100 years on display, has recently undergone conservation. The mummy's absence and return excited local interest not only in Egyptian history and the identity' of the mummy, but also in the conservation work itself. This prompted our decision to include information about conservation alongside the historical interpretation of the mummy.

The texts had to be appropriate to readers ranging from primary school children studying Ancient Peoples to adults with an amateur or specialist interest in Egyptology. When writing these texts, 1 followed Ekarv's guidelines faithfully (box 2). The information was divided into themed sections about the mummy, its provenance and historical background, and the conservation work it had undergone. I enjoyed the discipline writing so precisely, searching for the one word, which is both expressive and simple. Critical editing and the collaboration of my colleagues helped to avoid confusion and ambiguity; reading the passages aloud to them helped to catch the flow and rhythm of natural speech.