Mnemonic/Catalogs/List of mnemonics in English
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Spelling
- "'i' before 'e' except after 'c'" is a commonly taught mnemonic rule of spelling, but it is false. The following words break the rule: conscience, society, eighty, science, atheist, leisure, heights, Eiffel (as in Eiffel Tower), beige, feisty, heinous, sheik, dreidel, geisha, Einstein, caffeine, protein, rottweiller, kaleidoscope, zeitgeist, reified.
- To deal with the many counter-examples, sometimes the rule is extended to "'i' before 'e' except after 'c' when the sound is 'ee' or when the sound is 'a' as in neighbor and weigh".
- Spelling of the word 'arithmentic':
- "A Rat In The House May Eat The Ice Cream"
- Spelling of the word 'because':
- "Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants"
- Spelling of the word 'business':
- "You take the bus to business"
- Spelling of the word 'geography':
- "George Eliot's old grandmother rode a pig home yesterday"
- Spelling of the word 'Mississippi':
- "M I crooked letter, crooked letter I, crooked letter, crooked letter I, humpback, humpback I"
- Spelling of the word 'necessary':
- "Never Eat Cress Eat Salad Sandwiches And Remain Youthful!"
- "A vicar has one collar and two socks" (one 'c', two 's')
- Spelling of 'separate':
- "There is always a rat in 'separate'"
- "Keep your parachute in separate"
- Spelling of 'stationary'/'stationery':
- "Stationery has an 'e' as in envelope, stationary has an a as in automobile"
- "Stationery is for paper. Stationary is for parked car."
Mathematics
- Sin = Obtuse / Hypotenuse; Cosine = Adjacent / Hypotenuse; Tangent = Obtuse / Adjacent – see trigonometry
- SOH CAH TOA
Science
- The colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.
- Richard of York gave battle in vain.
- Order of the planets: Mercury, Venus, Terra (or Earth), Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto
- "Mother very thoughtfully made a jelly sandwich under no protest"
Engineering
- The color code on electronic resistors: Black = 0, Brown = 1, Red = 2, Orange = 3, Yellow = 4, Green = 5, Blue = 6, Violet = 7, Gray = 8, White = 9
- "Bad boys ravish our young girls but Violet goes willingly"
Medicine
- Beta blockers end in "olol" which looks like two lower-case backwards B's: acebutolol, betaxolol, bisoprolol, oxprenolol, propranolol.
- HIV/AIDS-prevention public health policy: "ABC" – abstinence, be faithful, use condoms.