. 2009 Jan;7(1):24–31. doi: 10.1370/afm.919

Table 4.

SOS Mnemonic for Screening Patients for Limited Health Literacy

	Mnemonic
Question Topic	Letter	Category	Threshold^a
Educational attainment	S	The person’s Schooling is …	… Sub-Secondary.
Self-rated reading ability	O	The person’s Opinion of his or her reading ability is that …	… he or she is Only an Okay reader.
Help needed when reading^b	S	When the person reads health-related materials, Support is …	… Sometimes Solicited.

^a Answers that may indicate a problem with health literacy.

^b Single-Item Literacy Screener.³⁷