What are examples of mnemonic devices?
Common mnemonic devices include acronyms like ROY G. BIV for the colors of the rainbow, phrases like Every Good Boy Does Fine for the lines of the treble clef, rhymes like Thirty days hath September, and the memory palace, which places facts along a familiar route. Each one turns something hard to remember into a short, odd, easy cue.
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In more detail
A mnemonic is a memory aid: a cue that is easy to recall and carries a harder fact with it. The main types are acronyms, expression sentences where each word starts with the letter of an item, rhymes, and images or places. The glossary entry on mnemonics gives the definition. This page is the list.
The best ones are your own. A silly sentence you made up sticks better than a famous one you were handed, because making it forces you to work with the material. Use mnemonics for lists, orders and labels, not for ideas, which you need to understand rather than memorize.
A mnemonic gets a fact in, but you still have to pull it out again and again. Test yourself on the cue and the full list a day later, then three days later, then a week later.
Common examples (English originals)
| Type | Example | What it helps you remember |
|---|---|---|
| Acronym | ROY G. BIV | Rainbow colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet |
| Acronym | HOMES | The Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior |
| Expression | Every Good Boy Does Fine | Treble clef lines: E, G, B, D, F |
| Expression | My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos | The planets in order, Mercury to Neptune |
| Expression | Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally | Order of operations in the US: parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction |
| Rhyme | Thirty days hath September | How many days each month has |
| Word chunks | SOH CAH TOA | Sine, cosine and tangent in a right triangle |
| Expression | On Old Olympus' Towering Tops A Finn And German Viewed Some Hops | The 12 cranial nerves in order |
Step by step
- 1
Pick the list or fact you keep forgetting.
- 2
Take the first letter of each item in the list.
- 3
Turn the letters into a word or a sentence. The sillier, the better.
- 4
Add a picture in your head of what the sentence says.
- 5
Write the cue on a flashcard with the full list on the back.
- 6
Test yourself after one day, three days and a week.
How StudyPDF helps
Upload your lecture PDF to StudyPDF, press New material and pick flashcards, and every list in your slides becomes cards you rate from Again to Easy. The ratings show which lists still do not stick, so you practice recall instead of rereading. A free account needs no card and gives about 4 materials a week.
Sources
See also
- AnswerHow do you memorize something fast?
- AnswerHow do you memorize the unit circle?
- AnswerHow to memorize the cranial nerves in 6 steps
- AnswerHow to memorize the periodic table in 4 steps
- Practice testCranial Nerves Mnemonic Flashcards
- TermMnemonic
- TermMemory palace
- AnswerHow do you do active recall?
- StudyPDFAI Flashcards
More questions
What are the types of mnemonics?
The usual ones are acronyms, expression or acrostic sentences, rhymes, chunking, and visual or place-based methods such as the memory palace.
Do mnemonic devices work?
They are well known to help with lists and ordered facts. They do not replace understanding, so use them for things you must recall exactly, like an order, a name or a formula.
What is a mnemonic for the planets?
My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
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