![Month - Knuckles (en)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Month_-_Knuckles_%28en%29.svg)
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any
learning
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, value (personal and cultural), values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machine learning, machines ...
technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human
memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of
elaborative encoding
Elaborative encoding is a mnemonic that relates to-be-remembered information to previously existing memories and knowledge.
One can make such connections visually, spatially, semantically or acoustically. Practitioners use multiple techniques, ...
, retrieval cues, and imagery as specific tools to encode information in a way that allows for efficient storage and retrieval. Mnemonics aid original information in becoming associated with something more accessible or meaningful—which, in turn, provides better retention of the information.
Commonly encountered mnemonics are often used for lists and in
auditory form, such as
short poems,
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s, initialisms, or memorable phrases, but mnemonics can also be used for other types of information and in
visual
The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (the ...
or
kinesthetic
Proprioception ( ), also referred to as kinaesthesia (or kinesthesia), is the sense of self-movement, force, and body position. It is sometimes described as the "sixth sense".
Proprioception is mediated by proprioceptors, mechanosensory neurons ...
forms. Their use is based on the observation that the human mind more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual, humorous, or otherwise "relatable" information, rather than more abstract or impersonal forms of information.
The word "mnemonic" is derived from the
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
word (), meaning 'of memory' or 'relating to memory' and is related to
Mnemosyne
In Greek mythology and ancient Greek religion, Mnemosyne (; grc, Μνημοσύνη, ) is the goddess of memory and the mother of the nine Muses by her nephew Zeus. In the Greek tradition, Mnemosyne is one of the Titans, the twelve divine chil ...
("remembrance"), the name of the goddess of memory in
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
. Both of these words are derived from (), 'remembrance, memory'. Mnemonics in antiquity were most often considered in the context of what is today known as the
art of memory
The art of memory (Latin: ''ars memoriae'') is any of a number of loosely associated mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and 'invention' of ideas. An alternative ...
.
Ancient Greeks and Romans distinguished between two types of memory: the "natural" memory and the "artificial" memory. The former is inborn, and is the one that everyone uses instinctively. The latter in contrast has to be trained and developed through the learning and practice of a variety of mnemonic techniques.
Mnemonic systems are techniques or strategies consciously used to improve memory. They help use information already stored in
long-term memory
Long-term memory (LTM) is the stage of the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model in which informative knowledge is held indefinitely. It is defined in contrast to short-term and working memory, which persist for only about 18 to 30 seconds. Long-t ...
to make
memorization
Memorization is the process of committing something to memory. It is a mental process undertaken in order to store in memory for later recall visual, auditory, or tactical information.
The scientific study of memory is part of cognitive neurosc ...
an easier task.
History
The general name of mnemonics, or ''memoria technica'', was the name applied to devices for aiding the memory, to enable the mind to reproduce a relatively unfamiliar idea, and especially a series of dissociated ideas, by connecting it, or them, in some artificial whole, the parts of which are mutually suggestive.
Mnemonic devices were much cultivated by
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
sophist
A sophist ( el, σοφιστής, sophistes) was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics, and mathematics. They taught ' ...
s and
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
s and are frequently referred to by
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
and
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
.
Philosopher
Charmadas Charmadas ( el, Χαρμάδας; also Charmides (Χαρμίδης); 168/7 – 103/91 BC) was a Greeks, Greek Academic skepticism, Academic Skeptic philosopher and a disciple of Carneades at the Platonic Academy, Academy in Athens. He was famous for ...
was famous for his outstanding memory and for his ability to memorize whole books and then recite them.
In later times, the poet
Simonides
Simonides of Ceos (; grc-gre, Σιμωνίδης ὁ Κεῖος; c. 556–468 BC) was a Greek lyric poet, born in Ioulis on Kea (island), Ceos. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria included him in the canonical list of the nine lyric p ...
was credited for development of these techniques, perhaps for no reason other than that the power of his memory was famous.
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
, who attaches considerable importance to the art, but more to the principle of order as the best help to memory, speaks of
Carneades
Carneades (; el, Καρνεάδης, ''Karneadēs'', "of Carnea"; 214/3–129/8 BC) was a Greek philosopher and perhaps the most prominent head of the Skeptical Academy in ancient Greece. He was born in Cyrene. By the year 159 BC, he had begu ...
(perhaps Charmades) of
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
and
Metrodorus of Scepsis
Metrodorus of Scepsis ( el, Μητρόδωρος ὁ Σκήψιος) (c. 145 BCE – 70 BCE), from the town of Scepsis in ancient Mysia, was a friend of Mithridates VI of Pontus and celebrated in antiquity for the excellence of his memory. He m ...
as distinguished examples of people who used well-ordered images to aid the memory. The
Romans
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
valued such helps in order to support facility in public speaking.
The Greek and the Roman
system of mnemonics was founded on the use of mental places and signs or pictures, known as "topical" mnemonics. The most usual method was to choose a large house, of which the apartments, walls, windows, statues, furniture, etc., were each associated with certain names, phrases, events or ideas, by means of symbolic pictures. To recall these, an individual had only to search over the apartments of the house until discovering the places where images had been placed by the imagination.
![Giordano Bruno Campo dei Fiori cropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Giordano_Bruno_Campo_dei_Fiori_cropped.jpg)
In accordance with this system, if it were desired to fix a historic date in memory, it was localised in an imaginary town divided into a certain number of districts, each with ten houses, each house with ten rooms, and each room with a hundred
quadrat
A quadrat is a frame, traditionally square, used in ecology, geography and biology to isolate a standard unit of area for study of the distribution of an item over a large area. Modern quadrats can for example be rectangular, circular, or irregul ...
es or memory-places, partly on the floor, partly on the four walls, partly on the ceiling. Therefore, if it were desired to fix in the memory the date of the invention of printing (1436), an imaginary book, or some other symbol of printing, would be placed in the thirty-sixth quadrate or memory-place of the fourth room of the first house of the historic district of the town. Except that the rules of mnemonics are referred to by
Martianus Capella
Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (fl. c. 410–420) was a jurist, polymath and Latin prose writer of late antiquity, one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that structured early medieval education. He was a nati ...
, nothing further is known regarding the practice until the 13th century.
Among the voluminous writings of
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon (; la, Rogerus or ', also '' Rogerus''; ), also known by the scholastic accolade ''Doctor Mirabilis'', was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiri ...
is a tractate ''De arte memorativa''.
Ramon Llull
Ramon Llull (; c. 1232 – c. 1315/16) was a philosopher, theologian, poet, missionary, and Christian apologist from the Kingdom of Majorca.
He invented a philosophical system known as the ''Art'', conceived as a type of universal logic to pro ...
devoted special attention to mnemonics in connection with his ''ars generalis.'' The first important modification of the method of the Romans was that invented by the German poet
Conrad Celtes
Conrad Celtes (german: Konrad Celtes; la, Conradus Celtis (Protucius); 1 February 1459 – 4 February 1508) was a German Renaissance humanist scholar and poet of the German Renaissance born in Franconia (nowadays part of Bavaria). He led the ...
, who, in his ''Epitoma in utramque Ciceronis rhetoricam cum arte memorativa nova'' (1492), used letters of the
alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
for associations, rather than places. About the end of the 15th century,
Peter of Ravenna (b. 1448) provoked such astonishment in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
by his mnemonic feats that he was believed by many to be a
necromancer
Necromancy () is the practice of magic or black magic involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions, or by resurrection for the purpose of divination; imparting the means to foretell future events; ...
. His ''Phoenix artis memoriae'' (
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
, 1491, 4 vols.) went through as many as nine editions, the seventh being published at
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...
in 1608.
About the end of the 16th century,
Lambert Schenkel
Lambert may refer to
People
*Lambert (name), a given name and surname
* Lambert, Bishop of Ostia (c. 1036–1130), became Pope Honorius II
*Lambert, Margrave of Tuscany ( fl. 929–931), also count and duke of Lucca
*Lambert (pianist), stage-name ...
(''Gazophylacium'', 1610), who taught mnemonics in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, Italy and
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, similarly surprised people with his memory. He was denounced as a
sorcerer by the
University of Louvain
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
, but in 1593 he published his tractate ''De memoria'' at
Douai
Douai (, , ,; pcd, Doï; nl, Dowaai; formerly spelled Douay or Doway in English) is a city in the Nord département in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. Located on the river Scarpe some from Lille and from Arras, D ...
with the sanction of that celebrated theological faculty. The most complete account of his system is given in two works by his pupil Martin Sommer, published in
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
in 1619. In 1618 John Willis (d. 1628?) published ''Mnemonica; sive ars reminiscendi'', containing a clear statement of the principles of topical or local mnemonics.
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno (; ; la, Iordanus Brunus Nolanus; born Filippo Bruno, January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist. He is known for his cosmologic ...
included a ''memoria technica'' in his treatise ''De umbris idearum,'' as part of his study of the ''ars generalis'' of
Llull. Other writers of this period are the
Florentine Publicius (1482);
Johannes Romberch
Johann Host von Romberch (born on a farm at Romberg or Romberch in Westphalia c. 1480, died at the close of 1532 or the beginning of 1533) was a German Dominican, and writer.
He was one of the seven Dominicans who distinguished themselves in ...
(1533);
Hieronimo Morafiot Hieronimo is one of the principal characters in Thomas Kyd's ''The Spanish Tragedy''. He is the knight marshal of Spain and the father of Horatio. In the onset of the play he is a dedicated servant to the King of Spain. However, the difference in so ...
, ''Ars memoriae'' (1602);and B. Porta, ''Ars reminiscendi'' (1602).
In 1648
Stanislaus Mink von Wennsshein
Johann Just Winckelmann (19 August 1620 – 3 July 1699) was a German writer and historian.
Under his pseudonym Stanislaus Mink von Wennsshein (also Wenusheim, Winusheim) he is known for having introduced a mnemonic system, the Major System (al ...
revealed what he called the "most fertile secret" in mnemonics — using consonants for figures, thus expressing numbers by words (vowels being added as required), in order to create associations more readily remembered. The philosopher
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
adopted an alphabet very similar to that of Wennsshein for his scheme of a form of writing common to all languages.
Wennsshein's method was adopted with slight changes afterward by the majority of subsequent "original" systems. It was modified and supplemented by
Richard Grey
Sir Richard Grey (1457 – 25 June 1483) was an English knight and the half-brother of King Edward V of England.
Early life
Richard Grey was the younger son of Sir John Grey of Groby and Elizabeth Woodville. Richard was a 3-year-old child whe ...
(1694-1771), a priest who published a ''Memoria technica'' in 1730. The principal part of Grey's method is briefly this:
Wennsshein's method is comparable to a
Hebrew system by which letters also stand for numerals, and therefore words for dates.
To assist in retaining the mnemonical words in the memory, they were formed into memorial lines. Such strange words in difficult
hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...
scansion, are by no means easy to memorise. The
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
or
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
, which Grey connected with a particular figure, was chosen arbitrarily.
A later modification was made in 1806
Gregor von Feinaigle
Gregor von Feinaigle (22 August 1760 – 27 December 1819) was a German mnemonist and Roman Catholic monk.
Life
Feinaigle was born in Ueberlingen on 22 August 1760.
Very little other is known of his early life except that he entered the Cister ...
, a German
monk
A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...
from
Salem
Salem may refer to: Places
Canada
Ontario
* Bruce County
** Salem, Arran–Elderslie, Ontario, in the municipality of Arran–Elderslie
** Salem, South Bruce, Ontario, in the municipality of South Bruce
* Salem, Dufferin County, Ontario, part ...
near
Constance
Constance may refer to:
Places
*Konstanz, Germany, sometimes written as Constance in English
*Constance Bay, Ottawa, Canada
* Constance, Kentucky
* Constance, Minnesota
* Constance (Portugal)
* Mount Constance, Washington State
People
* Consta ...
. While living and working in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, he expounded a system of mnemonics in which (as in Wennsshein) the numerical figures are represented by letters chosen due to some similarity to the figure or an accidental connection with it. This alphabet was supplemented by a complicated system of localities and signs. Feinaigle, who apparently did not publish any written documentation of this method, travelled to
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
in 1811. The following year one of his pupils published ''The New Art of Memory'' (1812), giving Feinaigle's system. In addition, it contains valuable historical material about previous systems.
Other
mnemonist
The title mnemonist refers to an individual with the ability to remember and recall unusually long lists of data, such as unfamiliar names, lists of numbers, entries in books, etc. Some mnemonists also memorize texts such as long poems, speeches, o ...
s later published simplified forms, as the more complicated menemonics were generally abandoned. Methods founded chiefly on the so-called laws of association (cf.
Mental association
Association of ideas, or mental association, is a process by which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers to account generally for the succession of mental phenomen ...
) were taught with some success in Germany.
[A simplified form of Feinaigle's method was published by ]Aimé Paris
Aimé Paris (1798–1866) was a French scholar. He was the developer of a method of stenography, and co-developer and propagator of what became the Galin-Paris-Chevé system of music notation.
Paris studied mathematics and law, and became a lawye ...
(''Principes et applications diverses de la mnémonique'', 7th ed., Paris, 1834). The use of symbolic pictures was revived in connection with the latter by Antoni Jaźwińsky of Poland. His system was published by the Polish general J. Bem, under the title ''Exposé général de la méthode mnémonique polonaise, perfectionnée à Paris'' (Paris, 1839). Various other modifications of the systems were advocated by subsequent mnemonists right through the 19th century. More complicated systems were proposed in the 20th century, such as the ''Keesing Memory System'', the ''System of Memory and Mental Training'', and the Pelman memory system.
Types
![Ohm_law_mnemonic_principle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Ohm_law_mnemonic_principle.svg)
; 1. Music mnemonics
: Songs and jingles can be used as a mnemonic. A common example is how children remember the alphabet by singing the ABCs.
; 2. Name mnemonics (acronym)
: The first letter of each word is combined into a new word. For example: VIBGYOR (or ROY G BIV) for the colours of the rainbow or
H O M E S (
Lake Huron
Lake Huron ( ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. Hydrology, Hydrologically, it comprises the easterly portion of Lake Michigan–Huron, having the same surface elevation as Lake Michigan, to which it is connected by the , Strait ...
,
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border sp ...
,
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...
,
Lake Erie
Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...
,
Lake Superior
Lake Superior in central North America is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface areaThe Caspian Sea is the largest lake, but is saline, not freshwater. and the third-largest by volume, holding 10% of the world's surface fresh wa ...
) the
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...
.
; 3. Expression or word mnemonics
: The first letter of each word is combined to form a phrase or sentence – e.g. "
Richard of York gave battle in vain" for the colours of the rainbow.
; 4. Model mnemonics
: A model is used to help recall information. Applications of this method involve the use of diagrams, cycles, graphs, and flowcharts to help understand or memorize an idea. e.g. cell cycle, pie charts, pyramid models.
; 5. Ode mnemonics
: The information is placed into a poem or
doggerel
Doggerel, or doggrel, is poetry that is irregular in rhythm and in rhyme, often deliberately for burlesque or comic effect. Alternatively, it can mean verse which has a monotonous rhythm, easy rhyme, and cheap or trivial meaning. The word is deri ...
, – e.g. "Note socer, gener, liberi, and Liber god of revelry, like puer these retain the 'e'" (most Latin nouns of the second declension ending in -er drop the -e in all of the oblique cases except the vocative, these are the exceptions).
; 6. Note organization mnemonics
: The method of note organization can be used as a memorization technique. Applications of this method involve the use of flash cards and lists. Flash cards are used by putting a question or word on one side of a paper and the answer or definition on the other side of the paper. Lists involve the organization of data from broad to detailed. e.g. Earth → Continent → Country.
; 7. Image mnemonics
: The information is constructed into a picture – e.g. the German weak declension can be remembered as five '-e's', looking rather like the state of Oklahoma in America, in a sea of '-en's'.
; 8. Connection mnemonics
: New
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...
is connected to knowledge already known.
; 9. Spelling mnemonics
: An example is "''i'' before ''e'' except after ''c'' or when sounding like ''a'' in ''neighbor'' and ''weigh''".
; 10. Visualization mnemonics
: Techniques such as the
method of loci
The method of loci is a strategy for memory enhancement, which uses visualizations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, journey m ...
allow the user to create unique associations in an imagined space.
Applications and examples
A
wide range of mnemonics are used for several purposes. The most commonly used mnemonics are those for lists, numerical sequences, foreign-language acquisition, and medical treatment for patients with memory deficits.
For lists
A common mnemonic for remembering lists is to create an easily remembered acronym, or, taking each of the initial letters of the list members, create a memorable phrase in which the words with the same acronym as the material. Mnemonic techniques can be applied to most memorisation of novel materials.
Some common examples for first-letter mnemonics:
* "Memory Needs Every Method Of Nurturing Its Capacity" is a mnemonic for spelling 'mnemonic.'
* To memorize the metric prefixes after Giga(byte), think of the candy, and this mnemonic. Tangiest
PEZ
Pez (, ; stylised as PEZ) is the brand name of an Austrian candy and associated manual candy dispensers. The candy is a pressed, dry, straight-edged, curved-corner block 15 mm ( inch) long, 8 mm ( inch) wide and 5 mm ...
? Yellow! TPEZY. Tera, Peta, Exa, Zetta, Yotta(byte).
* "Maybe Not Every Mnemonic Oozes Nuisance Intensely Concentrated" is perhaps a less common mnemonic for spelling 'mnemonic', but it benefits from being a bit humorous and memorable.
* The order of
sharps in
key signature
In Western musical notation, a key signature is a set of sharp (), flat (), or rarely, natural () symbols placed on the staff at the beginning of a section of music. The initial key signature in a piece is placed immediately after the clef at ...
notation is F♯, C♯, G♯, D♯, A♯, E♯ and B♯, giving the mnemonic "Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle". The order of
flats
Flat or flats may refer to:
Architecture
* Flat (housing), an apartment in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and other Commonwealth countries
Arts and entertainment
* Flat (music), a symbol () which denotes a lower pitch
* Flat (soldier), ...
is the reverse: B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭, C♭ and F♭ ("Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father").
* To memorise the colours of the
rainbow
A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows c ...
: In the phrase "
Richard Of York
Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York (21 September 1411 – 30 December 1460), also named Richard Plantagenet, was a leading English magnate and claimant to the throne during the Wars of the Roses. He was a member of the ruling House of Plantage ...
Gave Battle In Vain" each of the initial letters matches the colours of the rainbow in order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Other examples are "Run over your granny because it's violent" or the imaginary name "Roy G. Biv".
* To memorise the North American
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...
: The acronym HOMES matches the letters of the five lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior)
* To memorise
colour codes as they are used in
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
: the phrase "Bill Brown Realised Only Yesterday Good Boys Value Good Work" represents in order the 10 colours and their numerical order: black (0), brown (1), red (2), orange (3), yellow (4), green (5), blue (6), violet or purple (7), grey (8), and white (9).
* To memorise the effects, in
AC circuits, of the presence of an inductor or a capacitor, the phrase "Eli the Iceman" has been used by electrical engineers. With an inductor present, the peak value of the voltage (E) precedes the peak value of the current (I). With L, the symbol for inductance, this is written ELI ("E leads I, with L"). With a capacitor present, the peak current leads the peak voltage. The symbol for capacitance is C, giving ICE ("I leads E, with C").
* To memorise chemical reactions, such as
redox
Redox (reduction–oxidation, , ) is a type of chemical reaction in which the oxidation states of substrate (chemistry), substrate change. Oxidation is the loss of Electron, electrons or an increase in the oxidation state, while reduction ...
reactions, where it is common to mix up oxidation and reduction, the short phrase "LEO (Lose Electron Oxidation) the lion says GER (Gain Electron Reduction)" or "Oil Rig" can be used, the latter being an acronym for "Oxidation is losing, Reduction is gaining".
John "Doc" Walters, who taught chemistry and physics at Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1950s and 1960s, taught his students to use for this purpose the acronym RACOLA: Reduction is Addition of electrons and occurs at the Cathode; Oxidation is Loss of electrons and occurs at the Anode.
* To memorise the names of the planets and Pluto, use the
planetary mnemonic
A planetary mnemonic refers to a phrase created to remember the planets and dwarf planets of the Solar System, with the order of words corresponding to increasing sidereal periods of the bodies. One simple visual mnemonic is to hold out both hands ...
: "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos" or "My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets" or "My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets" or "Mother Visits Every Monday, Just Stays Until Noon, Period" - where each of the initial letters matches the name of the planets in our solar system (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune,
luto
Lutos (Ruto) is a Central Sudanic language
Central Sudanic is a family of about sixty languages that have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Central Sudanic languages are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, So ...
.
* To memorise the sequence of
stellar classification
In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their stellar spectrum, spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a Prism (optics), prism or diffraction grati ...
: "Oh, Be A Fine Girl
r Guy
R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ar'' (pronounced ), plural ''ars'', or in Irelan ...
Kiss Me" – where O, B, A, F, G, K, M are categories of stars.
* To memorise the layers of the
OSI Model
The Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model) is a conceptual model that 'provides a common basis for the coordination of SOstandards development for the purpose of systems interconnection'. In the OSI reference model, the communications ...
: "Please Do Not Teach Students Pointless Acronyms" – with each of the initial letters matching the name of the OSI layers from bottom to top (physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, application).
* A
taxonomy mnemonic
Taxonomy mnemonics are used to memorize the scientific classification applied in taxonomy. They are usually constructed with a series of words that begin with the letters KPCOFGS, corresponding to the initials of the primary taxonomic ranks. Words ...
is helpful for memorizing the scientific classification applied in taxonomy, such as "Do Kings Play Chess On Funny Glass Stairs?" or "Do Kindly Please Come Over For Green Soup" (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species).
* To memorise the diatomic elements:
Br I N Cl H O F(pronounced 'brinkelhoff') or "
Have No Fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
Of Ice
Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaq ...
Cold
Cold is the presence of low temperature, especially in the atmosphere. In common usage, cold is often a subjective perception. A lower bound to temperature is absolute zero, defined as 0.00K on the Kelvin scale, an absolute thermodynamic ...
Beer
Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from ce ...
."
* Opinion, Shape, Colour, Origin, and Material (OPSHACOM): adjectives order in English grammar.
* "Dash In A Real Rush! Hurry, Or Else Accident!" is a mnemonic for spelling 'diarrhoea".
* To memorize the part of the brain associated with memory, Herds of Animals Cause Panic. Hippocampus, Amygdala, Cerebellum, & Prefrontal Cortex.
*To memorize the 3 types of encoding: SAVE (Semantic encoding, Acoustic encoding, Visual encoding)
*The parts of the
digestive system
The human digestive system consists of the gastrointestinal tract plus the accessory organs of digestion (the tongue, salivary glands, pancreas, liver, and gallbladder). Digestion involves the breakdown of food into smaller and smaller compone ...
: Mother Eats Squirrel Guts Because She Is Living In Rural Arkansas (Mouth, Esophagus, Stomach, Gall Bladder, Small Intestine, Large Intestine, Rectum, Anus)
For numerical sequences and mathematical operations
Mnemonic phrases or poems can be used to encode numeric sequences by various methods, one common one is to create a new phrase in which the number of letters in each word represents the according digit of pi. For example, the first 15 digits of the mathematical constant
pi (3.14159265358979) can be encoded as "Now I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics"; "Now", having 3 letters, represents the first number, 3.
Piphilology
Piphilology comprises the creation and use of mnemonic techniques to remember many digits of the mathematical constant . The word is a play on the word "pi" itself and of the linguistic field of philology.
There are many ways to memorize , inclu ...
is the practice dedicated to creating mnemonics for pi.
Another is used for "calculating" the multiples of 9 up to 9 × 10 using one's fingers. Begin by holding out both hands with all fingers stretched out. Now count left to right the number of fingers that indicates the multiple. For example, to figure 9 × 4, count four fingers from the left, ending at your left-hand index finger. Bend this finger down and count the remaining fingers. Fingers to the left of the bent finger represent tens, fingers to the right are ones. There are three fingers to the left and six to the right, which indicates 9 × 4 = 36. This works for 9 × 1 up through 9 × 10.
For remembering the rules in adding and multiplying two signed numbers, Balbuena and Buayan (2015) made the letter strategies LAUS (like signs, add; unlike signs, subtract) and LPUN (like signs, positive; unlike signs, negative), respectively.
('
thresher') is a Finnish mnemonic regarding
electricity
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...
: the first and last three letters can be arranged into the equations
and
. (The letter ''M'' is discarded, which can be explained with another, politically incorrect mnemonic.)
For foreign-language acquisition
Mnemonics may be helpful in learning foreign languages, for example by transposing difficult foreign words with words in a language the learner knows already, also called "cognates" which are very common in the Spanish language. A useful such technique is to find
linkword {{Unreferenced, date=December 2007
Linkword is a mnemonic system promoted by Michael Gruneberg since at least the early 1980s for learning languages based on the similarity of the sounds of words. The process involves creating an easily visualize ...
s, words that have the same pronunciation in a known language as the target word, and associate them visually or auditorially with the target word.
For example, in trying to assist the learner to remember ''ohel'' (), the
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
word for ''tent'', the linguist
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil'ad Zuckermann ( he, גלעד צוקרמן, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and Ch ...
proposes the memorable sentence "''Oh hell'', there's a raccoon in my ''tent''". The memorable sentence "There's a ''fork'' in ''Ma's leg''" helps the learner remember that the Hebrew word for ''fork'' is ''mazleg'' ().
Similarly, to remember the Hebrew word ''bayit'' (), meaning ''house'', one can use the sentence "that's a lovely ''house'', I'd like to ''buy it''."
The linguist
Michel Thomas
Michel Thomas (born Moniek Kroskof, February 3, 1914 – January 8, 2005) was a Polyglot (person), polyglot linguist, and decorated war veteran. He survived imprisonment in several different Nazi concentration camps after serving in the Maqu ...
taught students to remember that ''estar'' is the Spanish word for ''to be'' by using the phrase "to be a star".
Another Spanish example is by using the mnemonic "
Vin Diesel
Mark Sinclair (born July 18, 1967), known professionally as Vin Diesel, is an American actor. One of the world's highest-grossing actors, he is best known for playing Dominic Toretto in the ''Fast & Furious'' franchise.
Diesel began audition ...
Has Ten Weapons" to teach irregular command verbs in the you(tú) form. Spanish verb forms and tenses are regularly seen as the hardest part of learning the language. With a high number of verb tenses, and many verb forms that are not found in English, Spanish verbs can be hard to remember and then conjugate. The use of mnemonics has been proven to help students better learn foreign languages, and this holds true for Spanish verbs. A particularly hard verb tense to remember is command verbs. Command verbs in Spanish are conjugated differently depending on who the command is being given to. The phrase, when pronounced with a Spanish accent, is used to remember "Ven Di Sal Haz Ten Ve Pon Sé", all of the irregular Spanish command verbs in the you(tú) form. This mnemonic helps students attempting to memorize different verb tenses.
Another technique is for learners of
gendered languages to associate their
mental image
A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of 'perceiving' some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are ...
s of words with a colour that matches the gender in the target language. An example here is to remember the Spanish word for "foot," ''pie,''
ee-aywith the image of a foot stepping on a pie, which then spills blue filling (blue representing the male gender of the noun in this example).
For French verbs which use être as an auxiliary verb for compound tenses : DR and MRS VANDERTRAMPP: descendre, rester, monter, revenir, sortir, venir, arriver, naître, devenir, entrer, rentrer, tomber, retourner, aller, mourir, partir, passer.
Masculine countries in French (le): "Neither can a breeze make a sane Japanese chilly in the USA." (les) Netherlands (Pays-Bas), Canada, Brazil (Brésil), Mexico (Mexique), Senegal, Japan (Japon), Chile (Chili), & (les) USA (États-Unis d'Amérique).
For patients with memory deficits
Mnemonics can be used in aiding patients with memory deficits that could be caused by
head injuries
A head injury is any injury that results in trauma to the skull or brain. The terms ''traumatic brain injury'' and ''head injury'' are often used interchangeably in the medical literature. Because head injuries cover such a broad scope of inju ...
,
strokes
A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...
,
epilepsy
Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrical ...
,
multiple sclerosis
Multiple (cerebral) sclerosis (MS), also known as encephalomyelitis disseminata or disseminated sclerosis, is the most common demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This d ...
and other neurological conditions.
In a study conducted by Doornhein and De Haan, the patients were treated with six different memory strategies including the mnemonics technique. The results concluded that there were significant improvements on the immediate and delayed subtest of the RBMT, delayed recall on the Appointments test, and relatives rating on the MAC from the patients that received mnemonics treatment. However, in the case of stroke patients, the results did not reach statistical significance.
Effectiveness
Academic study of the use of mnemonics has shown their effectiveness. In one such experiment, subjects of different ages who applied mnemonic techniques to learn novel vocabulary outperformed control groups that applied
contextual learning
Contextual learning is based on a constructivist theory of teaching and learning. Learning takes place when teachers are able to present information in such a way that students are able to construct meaning based on their own experiences. Contextu ...
and free-learning styles.
[
]
Mnemonics were seen to be more effective for groups of people who struggled with or had weak
long-term memory
Long-term memory (LTM) is the stage of the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model in which informative knowledge is held indefinitely. It is defined in contrast to short-term and working memory, which persist for only about 18 to 30 seconds. Long-t ...
, like the elderly. Five years after a mnemonic training study, a research team followed-up 112 community-dwelling older adults, 60 years of age and over. Delayed recall of a word list was assessed prior to, and immediately following mnemonic training, and at the 5-year follow-up. Overall, there was no significant difference between word recall prior to training and that exhibited at follow-up. However, pre-training performance gains scores in performance immediately post-training and use of the mnemonic predicted performance at follow-up. Individuals who self-reported using the mnemonic exhibited the highest performance overall, with scores significantly higher than at pre-training. The findings suggest that mnemonic training has long-term benefits for some older adults, particularly those who continue to employ the mnemonic.
This contrasts with a study from surveys of medical students that approximately only 20% frequently used mnemonic acronyms.
In humans, the process of aging particularly affects the
medial temporal lobe
The temporal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.
The temporal lobe is involved in proc ...
and
hippocampus
The hippocampus (via Latin from Greek , 'seahorse') is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system, a ...
, in which the
episodic memory
Episodic memory is the memory of everyday events (such as times, location geography, associated emotions, and other contextual information) that can be explicitly stated or conjured. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred ...
is synthesized. The episodic memory stores information about items, objects, or features with spatiotemporal contexts. Since mnemonics aid better in remembering spatial or physical information rather than more abstract forms, its effect may vary according to a subject's age and how well the subject's medial temporal lobe and hippocampus function.
This could be further explained by one recent study which indicates a general deficit in the memory for spatial locations in aged adults (mean age 69.7 with standard deviation of 7.4 years) compared to young adults (mean age 21.7 with standard deviation of 4.2 years). At first, the difference in target recognition was not significant.
The researchers then divided the aged adults into two groups, aged unimpaired and aged impaired, according to a
neuropsychological testing
Neuropsychological tests are specifically designed tasks that are used to measure a psychological function known to be linked to a particular brain structure or pathway. Tests are used for research into brain function and in a clinical setting f ...
. With the aged groups split, there was an apparent deficit in target recognition in aged impaired adults compared to both young adults and aged unimpaired adults. This further supports the varying effectiveness of mnemonics in different age groups.
Moreover, different research was done previously with the same notion, which presented with similar results to that of Reagh et al. in a verbal mnemonics discrimination task.
Studies (notably "
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two
"The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology. It was written by the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Harvard University's De ...
") have suggested that the
short-term memory
Short-term memory (or "primary" or "active memory") is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a short interval. For example, short-term memory holds a phone number that has just been recit ...
of adult humans can hold only a limited number of items; grouping items into larger chunks such as in a mnemonic might be part of what permits the retention of a larger total amount of information in short-term memory, which in turn can aid in the creation of long-term memories.
See also
*
List of mnemonics
This article contains a list of notable mnemonics used to remember various objects, lists, etc.
Astronomy
*Order of planets from the Sun: (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto)
:obsolete (per the IAU de ...
*
List of visual mnemonics
Visual mnemonics are a type of mnemonic that work by associating an image with characters or objects whose name sounds like the item that has to be memorized.
Examples
Digits
Digits can be memorized by their shapes, so that:
0 -looks like an egg ...
*
Earworm
An earworm, sometimes referred to as a brainworm, sticky music, stuck song syndrome, or, most commonly after earworms, Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI), is a catchy and/or memorable piece of music or saying that continuously occupies a person ...
*
Memory sport
Memory sport, sometimes referred to as competitive memory or the mind sport of memory, refers to competitions in which participants attempt to memorize then recall different forms of information, under certain guidelines. The sport has been formal ...
*
Method of loci
The method of loci is a strategy for memory enhancement, which uses visualizations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, journey m ...
*
Mnemonic dominic system
The Dominic system is a mnemonic system used to remember sequences of digits similar to the mnemonic major system. It was invented and used in competition by eight-time World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien.
Differences from the major system
The ...
*
Mnemonic goroawase system
Japanese wordplay relies on the nuances of the Japanese language and Japanese script for humorous effect. Double entendres have a rich history in Japanese entertainment (such as in kakekotoba) due to the language's large number of homographs (d ...
*
Mnemonic link system A mnemonic link system, sometimes also known as a chain method, is a method of remembering lists that is based on creating an association between the elements of that list. For example, when memorizing the list (dog, envelope, thirteen, yarn, window ...
*
Mnemonic major system
The major system (also called the phonetic number system, phonetic mnemonic system, or Herigone's mnemonic system) is a mnemonic technique used to aid in memorizing numbers.
The system works by converting numbers into consonants, then into words ...
*
Mnemonic peg system The mnemonic peg system, invented by Henry Herdson is a memory aid that works by creating mental associations between two concrete objects in a one-to-one fashion that will later be applied to to-be-remembered information. Typically this involves ...
*
Mnemonics in assembler programming languages
*
Mnemonic effect
The mnemonic effect or mnemotechnic effect occurs when the viewer of an advertisement is persuaded in making a buying decision that is contradictory to the intention of the advertiser.
This can be observed especially in image advertising, in which ...
(advertising)
References
External links
{{Authority control
Memory
Learning methods
Cognitive training