Each letter is a cue to an item you need to remember.
The letters can be put together into a word that is formed from the first letter of each word of the fact to be remembered.
Forming an acronym is a good strategy to use to remember information in any order.
How to form an acronym
For examples, look at the pictures above.
1) Write the facts you need to remember.
2) Find a word that expresses the fact or idea and use that alone or in a brief phrase or sentence.
3) Underline the first letter of the word that expresses the fact.
4) Arrange the underlined letters to form an acronym that is a real word or a nonsense word you can pronounce and is easy to remember.
Creating Acronym Words
"HOMES" is an example of an acronym that is a real word you can use to remember the names of the five Great Lakes: Michigan, Erie, Superior, Ontario, Huron. In HOMES, H is the first letter of Huron and helps you remember that name; O is the first letter of Ontario, and so on.
Creating Acronym Abbreviations
We use acronym abbreviations all the time. You can create your own by combining the first letters of the words that you need to remember. The key is to create an abbreviation that you will remember!
Creating Acronym Sentences
Creating an acronymic sentence is a good strategy to use when you have to remember information in a certain order. An acronymic sentence is a sentence that is created using the first letter of each piece of information to be remembered.
"My (Mercury) very (Venus) earthy (Earth) mother (Mars) just (Jupiter) served (Saturn) us(Uranus) nine (Neptune) pizzas (Pluto)"
This is an acronymic sentence that students through the years have used to remember the order of planets around our sun, from closest to farthest.
If you accept recent evidence that Pluto is not a planet, you can use "My very earthy mother just served us nachos."