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The objective of Useful Mnemonics is to use mnemonics (ie memory devices, learning techniques, etc) to make it easier to remember elements of a list or set.
Sometimes, these elements are ordered, ie they have to recalled in order. Who can forget “Richard Of York Gives Battle In Vain” or VIBGYOR as a cue for the seven primary colours of the rainbow? Which writer has not struggled with the order of adjectives (Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Colour, Origin, Material, Purpose) in English?
Sometimes, you just want to remember the elements of a set, eg the original 13 colonies of the USA; the values of Roman numerals (I, V, X, L, C, D, M); or get a sense of how long ago a geological era (eg Cambrian, Jurassic) was.
Adjective Order
Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Colour, Origin, Material, Purpose
Only Single, Available, Shapely, Couth Operators May Play
Alkane Series
Methane, Ethane, Propane, Butane, Pentane, Hexane
My Enormous Penguin Bounces Pretty High
Amino Acids, Essential
Phenylalanine, Valine, Threonine, Tryptophan, Isoleucine, Methionine, Histidine, Arginine
, Leucine, Lysine
Pvt. Tim Hall (Private Tim Hall)
Vinay Kumar Rai is an editor (he polishes someone else’s writing); a self-publishing consultant (he tells authors-to-be how to self-publish their books); a copywriter (he writes marketing copy for blog posts, brochures, DMs and eDMs, flyers, profiles, sales letters, Websites, etc); a writer (he writes educational articles for magazines and Websites); and a ghost writer (he writes books for other people).
He is also the editor of Think+ Science, a monthly print magazine that is read by lower-secondary-school students in Singapore. TS is published by Nurture Craft.
He’s been writing professionally since 2001 and for fun since he was six years old, the latter being more than half a century ago.
His strength is in communicating difficult ideas and jargon. His clients are typically experts, publishers, or business-people with products or service to market.
He has no wives, no kids, no pets, and no Pokémon. However, he does have a lot of books.
He’s really into Karma, the Golden Rule, first principles, mental models, universal laws, and philosophy.
He’s really not a fan of the “My God true, your God false” types but he is a big fan of Alan Watts, Antoine Be champ, Buckminster Fuller, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Friedrich Nietzsche, Giordano Bruno, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Nikola Tesla, Norman Borlaug, Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, Rudolf Steiner, Socrates, Viktor Schauberger, and Swami
Vivekananda.
Vinay is the founder of Elementum.