Mnemonics

My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets 

Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit  

HOMES

Can you guess what the above phrases stand for? The first is the planets in our solar system (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and former planet Pluto), the second is the notes on the lines of the musical treble clef, and the last is the Great Lakes in North America. 

From early childhood, we’re taught mnemonics (i.e., memorization techniques that support information recall) as a fun way to remember and recall important information about our world. Sometimes referred to as memory “tricks,” they use the basic principles of learning and memory, such as meaningfulness, organization, association, and attention, to help us organize and recall certain information. 

There are various types of mnemonics: 

• Acronyms: Forming a word from the first letters of the items. For example, DRSABCD is used to remember the essential steps to follow in a medical emergency (Danger, Response, Send for Help, Airway, Breathing, CPR, Defibrillation). 
• Acrostics: Creating a sentence where the first letter of each word represents one in a series of items to remember. For instance, “Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain” is used to remember the colors of the rainbow. 
• Rhymes and Songs: Memorizing information in a rhyme or tune, like learning the alphabet to the melody of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. 
• Chunking: Breaking large bits of information into smaller, manageable groups. For example, many of us chunk our phone numbers and recite them to other people in sections: 123-456-7890.
• Visual Imagery: Using mental images or diagrams to represent concepts or information. To remember which elephants live where, for example, imagine that African elephants have large ears shaped like Africa, while Asian elephants have smaller ears shaped like India.

Mnemonics can be either verbal or visual. Most of the examples above are spoken—aloud or silently—but others are performed physically. Think about a young child learning to distinguish left from right. Often, they are told to hold up their hands with the thumb outstretched so that the left hand creates an “L” shape. 

So what do we use mnemonics for? Most mnemonics work by adding structure or meaning to information that lacks it naturally.¹ Think about the planets. You might be able to name them all without any problem. However, there’s no clear logic or structure to their order, so unless you’re a budding astronomer, it’s probably difficult for you to name them sequentially without some help. Rather than relying on an inherent connection to the material, mnemonics impose an external framework on otherwise disorganized or abstract content. In contrast, content that is already meaningful or well-structured usually doesn’t require mnemonic aids.

Another key characteristic of mnemonics is that they often involve adding something extra to what is being memorized, a process known as ‘elaboration.’¹⁹ These elaborations help by forming associations between new information and what the learner already knows. For example, to remember that mitochondria are the ‘powerhouses’ of cells, we might say that they are “mighty chondria,” alluding to their ability to convert energy. 

Finally, mnemonics help by directing the learner’s focus to important elements of the material, such as key terms, sequences, categories, or relationships between ideas. Aside from the order of the planets, mnemonics can help people remember the steps in a process or the first letters of important concepts (which in turn trigger recall of the words). These aids make the information easier to recall and give the learner a structured way to prioritize information. They also tend to make the learning experience more engaging and enjoyable, which can enhance attention and recall compared to traditional rote memorization. For example, instead of memorizing the abstract order of mathematical operations (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction) through repetition alone, learners use the mnemonic “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.”

While we have all used mnemonics at some point in our lives, there are people who are experts in this field. Mnemonists are skilled in using mnemonic techniques to memorize and recall large amounts of information, such as lists, numbers, or facts.