covering the gaps in your employment history

Gaps in employment are tricky to handle in job applications and interviews (from both side of the desk). Your prospective employers want to understand your work history, but they certainly don't want to ask any unlawful or inappropriate questions. And their curiosity is understandable - one thing I learned in  interviewing training is that past actions are the clearest indicators of future actions.

So how to satisfy the reasonable concerns of the employer, without getting mired in the details of your personal life? Here are my tips:

1. Don't lie.
2. Make sure your employment history is a story with a plot that the interviewers can follow. The activity during employment gaps may provide needed information about your career moves and ambitions. 
3. Keep it simple: child or elder care, education, illness, relocation for family or financial reasons, travel. You and you interviewers may both be uncomfortable if you share too many details and it will likely take the interview off-track.
4. If you can (without breaking rule #1) reassure the interviewer that this situation is unlikely to recur.
5. Non-chronological CVs highlight employment gaps, rather than hiding them. The CV reader will immediately start trying to assemble a timeline in their head, which is annoyingly hard to do.
6. When possible, insert a line or two in your cover letter or personal statement explaining the gaps. Some applications will require you to do this, but otherwise imagine the shortlisters scratching their heads when they read your employment chronology.
7. If you did something during the gap that is worthy of note, try adding it to your CV in the correct chronological space. Worthy of note activities include formal and informal volunteer work and professional development/education. Now take another look at your CV and decide if the new version is stronger or weaker.
8. Bottom line - you can't hide them, so take initiative to present gaps in the best light.

Other suggestions?