SENTENCES/ ACROSTICS

Like acronyms, you use the first letter of each word you are trying to remember. Instead of making a new word, though, you use the letters to make a sentence. Here are some examples:

• My Dear Aunt Sally (mathematical order of operations: Multiply and Divide before you Add and Subtract)
• Kings Phil Came Over for the Genes Special (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus, Species)

Can you think of other examples? Like acronyms, acrostics can be very simple to remember and are particularly helpful when you need to remember a list in a specific order. One advantage over acronyms is that they are less limiting. If your words don't form easy-to-remember acronyms, using acrostics may be preferable. On the other hand, they can take more thought to create and require remembering a whole new sentence rather than just one word (as is the case with acronyms). Otherwise, they present the same problem as acronyms in that they aid memorization but not comprehension.

EXERCISE: PRACTICE USING ACROSTICS 1. Try making up a sentence (acrostic) to remember the five mnemonic techniques discussed in this section. 2. Now come up with acrostics for several of the main sections of a chapter from one or your textbooks.