List of common interesting mnemonics

25+ Commonly Used Mnemonics Examples

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Last Updated on May 27, 2022 by Editorial Team

Brains and our teaching spaces have been accustomed to learning about topics in a certain way for centuries. Following these methods may not be easy for all the students, especially when they need to remember complex data. Mnemonics is a simplified strategy often assist to make them retain faster. 

But, what are they and how to make them? To assist the same, here we came up with all relevant insights with a list of commonly employed and interesting mnemonics. You may choose to opt for them directly or may get inspired to make your own. 

List of common interesting mnemonics:

Here is the list of most commonly used mnemonics brought in one place;

  1. VIBGYOR– To remember rainbow colors easily: Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red.
  1. Use the sentence “Eat An Apple As A Nice Snack” to remember the continents of the world: Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, North America, and South America.
  1. PEMDAS is an easy acronym to remember the order of operations to solve an equation. It stands for Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and then Subtraction.
  1. Whenever someone is in a new location and wants to recollect, they can use STOP implying:
  • Stop where you are
  • Think about what to do
  • Observe all around
  • Plan with these insights
  1. Remembering nine planets is easy with the sentence, “My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas” redirecting to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
  1. Taxonomic ranking in biology gets easy with, “King Philip Came Over For Great Sage” which makes it easy to remember: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.
  1. The four directions are easy to remember with “Never Eat Soggy Waffles” which implies North, East, South, and West. 
  1. The four lobes of the brain are Frontal, Temporal, Parietal, and Occipital. These can be remembered as “Freud Tore his Pants Off”.
  1. HOMES can be used for the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.
  2. The order of the cell cycle phases can be remembered by I protect my artichokes too, Cliff! – Interphase, Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, Telophase, and Cytokinesis. 
  1. When to use “gray” or “grey” – GrAy = America, GrEy = England
  1. When to use “affect” or “effect”: Affect = Verb, Effect = Noun. Consider the work RAVEN and check: V comes after A, so Affect is a Verb.  Also, E comes after N, so Effect is a Noun. 
  1. Time zones in Canada: Prime Ministers Can’t Eat Any Nachos, which stands for Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern, Atlantic, and Newfoundland.
  1. How to set the table: Anything with four letters goes on the left (FORK); anything with five letters goes on the right (SPOON).
  1.  Absolute soluble elements can be remembered as “NAG SAG”, which accounts for Nitrates Acetates Group, and Sulfates Ammonium Group.
  2. Many times people get confused if there are 2 Cs in Necessary or 2 S; This can be remembered by – The word Necessary has a Collar and two Sleeves (Just like T-shirt).
  3. To learn the spelling of Dilemma, just remember: Emma had a dilemma.
  4. The head of your school is a principal or principle? Well, Your principal is your pal.
  5. SOH-CAH-TOA: This Math Mnemonic is used to explain Sine, Cosine, and Tangent in Trigonometry where sine equals the hypotenuse, cosine is adjacent over the hypotenuse and tangent equation equals opposite over the adjacent equation.
  6. To remember how to pronounce Inevitable, just remember the Mnemonic: In Every Table.
  7. How would you remember the phrase ‘Bite the Bullet’. Just remember Biting the bullet seems already a difficult task ( making an unrealistic vision).
  1. The river Mississippi is written as M-iss-iss-ipp-i. For memorizing correct spelling, this is a good technique. It can also be remembered with the Rhyme – Mrs. M, Mrs. I, Mrs SSI, Mrs SSI, Mrs. PPI. 
  1. Confused with the spelling of Slaughter? Just remember Slaughter is laughter with an S.
  1. Words like Foreign can be remembered by the Mnemonic: FOR Eating Ice, Go North.
  2. How I wish I could calculate pi. The number of letters gives the first seven digits of pi: 3.141592… 
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Mnemonics- The strategy that changed education

Mnemonics were seen to be productive strategies that sparked the interest of young minds in the educational sphere, especially in primary and elementary education paving the way for unconventional teaching methods which provided assistance across disciplines in memorizing data and complex information. Mnemonics can be successful and gave results in what was assumed  to only give short-term results and came to be  useful in the learning sphere

  1. One of the first benefits of learning through Mnemonics is strengthening the retention of information at a young age and the ability to separate necessary knowledge from the redundant one.
  2.  Statistics show that students who learned facts in the form of songs performed better than students who just reread the same facts.
  3. Mnemonics help to accumulate the minute details in the process of gathering information and have helped remember the steps of an equation, different stages of evolution, and different parts of the various topics across disciplines in an easier way.
  4. Mnemonics assists pupils to come out of rote learning by ensuring quick hacks to recall information easily. 
  5. Mnemonics were seen to be contributing to spending less time learning new information as Mnemonics once learned gave sharper skills to the brain and improved the quality of long-term memory.

Mnemonics- What makes up these pedagogies?

Mnemonics turns things factual, and uninteresting concepts or topics into something vivid and engaging. Mnemonics  becomes further  interesting as they are not set in stone and there can be a different kind of styles and techniques which one can make on their own or bring their own twist to an existing Mnemonic 

Here are a few insights that make up a handy Mnemonic:

  • Take the first letter of the information and note it down.
  • Rhyming words that make a sing song-poem style jingle.
  • Make a sentence. Write down the first thing that comes into your mind related to the information. It doesn’t have to make sense. It should be something that makes the information relatable to you. 
  • Onomatopoeia- If there is a particular noise that you are able to relate to the new information you have received. You can make a noise on your own that helps you in memorizing the information.
  • Anagrams- This is a wordplay technique that can be turned into a fun game. An easy way to remember anagrams is where you swap the initial syllables or letters of words to make new phrases. They sound silly and are fun to learn but that’s what makes them easy to remember.

The purpose of making Mnemonics is to make learning fun and easier. This is ensured by making learning to the point. 

Commonly used mnemonics-Interesting mnemonics for your little one

Children have often been seen to respond to strategies that involve more than just retelling or rereading a book. For children, playing with phrases, learning a silly song, or associating an image with the information they have learned to remember it becomes easy to learn as small children have short attention spans. Unconventional strategies like Mnemonics of different kinds help in holding their attention and make it easier for the learners.  These devices help students in their memory from a young age, helping them obtain information that helps them in the longer run. Here you will find 10 commonly used mnemonics when teaching the students: 

  1. Rhyming– Rhyming words and tunes are words that are joined together and either sung as a poem or remembered as a rhyme to remember the information. These spark interest of a child in learning and help in retaining information in their long-term memory..
  2. Acronym– Acronyms imply using the first letter of the specific word to make retaining information easier. Memorizing the keywords can let the little one retain new information easily. 
  3. Mini Stories– It becomes tough to take in information in one long text and thereby the task of dividing a long text into small chunks of stories helps the child in remembering the concept. The first letter of the phrase matches a facet of the concept. Unlike acronyms, in mini-stories a phrase compiled together has to make a meaningful sentence. For eg:” Never Eat Sour Watermelon” helps remember the child North, East, South, West.
  4. Repetition – Repeating the information in a fun way helps the child in retaining the information in their long-term memory. Using the repetitive technique the child is able to collect information by rereading text or singing in the form of a poem or a jingle. Clapping patterns helps children who are kinesthetic learners. For example, to remember the way from your house to the school one can recognise the landmarks that come in the way and repeat it several times in the form of a poem or a jingle that gets imprinted in your brain in the long-term memory.
  5. To work on memory, Visual Mnemonics help the children in working with the visuals they are provided linking up new information to visuals or other relevant cues. For example, upon meeting a new person you need to remember their face. Pick a feature of their face and remember it and connect the feature like a long nose or tall height to the new person you have met.
  6. Spelling Mnemonics is used to differentiate similar sounding words. These  Mnemonics help in learning the new word spellings. Mnemonics help in understanding the difference between Principal and principle. Both the words have the same phonetics yet have completely different meanings. For example, to learn the correct spelling of the principal of a school and a principle you follow is when you remember that the former one ends in pal like a friend and the latter one has the le in the end and you follow the RULE which also ends with le.
  7. Connections Mnemonics–  Here Mnemonics is used by connecting a number of things to each other to learn insights easily.. For example, to remember the place a certain book is kept in the library we connect the name of the book to the color of the book that is next to it so that it becomes easier to remember where to put it back.
  8. There is the Order Mnemonics which is used to remember a specific order of things like remembering mathematical equations. These can also be employed to retain musical cords. Say, the list of planets can be remembered with a pattern of order, “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles.”. This is where the first letter of each word in the phrase is the same letter by which the planet starts and as can be observed the order of the planets is also maintained through the phrase.
  9. Name Mnemonics- The first letter of each word is fabricated into a name to remember it easily. For example, to learn the names of the colors of a rainbow pick out the first letter of each color in the order it is and make a name.
  10. Long Division is taught through an order where every step comes in an order where the instructions go like Division, Multiply, Subtract and Bring Down. This can be helped out by the line, “Dead Monkeys Smell Bad”. This is to remember the order: Divide, Multiply, Subtract and Bring down. 

Concluding thoughts

As we go through the various strategies and techniques of Mnemonics one thing is crystal clear the concept is the science of assisting pupils with memory skills and helps in memorizing the information in an easier and more interactive way. Learning by this strategy is often interesting as it bridges the gap in memorization. This is helpful for those who feel retaining huge amounts of information is a burden and working with zeal towards learning and figuring out topics that seem arduous for students. Check out the above list of commonly employed mnemonics to either opt for it or inspire to make yours. 

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