'Many volcanoes erupt. Moldy jam sandwiches, unusually niffy. Phew!' and other mnemonics

The planet dwarf planet Pluto.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Last week I promised to explain what 'mnemonic' means, and any non-word nerds will most likely be disappointed to hear that I'm keeping that promise!

A mnemonic is actually a memory device or technique which helps you remember information.  For example...

"Many Volcanoes Erupt. Moldy Jam Sandwiches, Unusually Niffy. Phew!"

...is a mnemonic I learnt at school to help remember the order of the planets. The first letter of each word corresponds to the first letter of each of the planets, namely...

"Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto."

As I'm sure everyone knows, Pluto is no longer a planet, but people were stupid back in those days and classed Pluto as a planet even though its obviously a dwarf planet!

Here's another mnemonic I learnt as a child to remember the colours of the rainbow...

"Richard Of York Gained Battle In Vain."

A rainbow, from red to violet.

Once again the first letter of each word corresponds to the first letter of the colours of the rainbow in sequence...

"Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet."

My four most recently published books in order of publication are:

Dead Men Tell No Tales
The Freedom Lottery
Fly-Tipping
The Quiz Master

So if you wanted to use a mnemonic to remember the order they were published, you might use something like...

"Desirable fiction! Fantastic quartet!"

Or alternatively, if you're a miserable grump, then you might use...

"Disappointing fiction. Forget quick!"

But if you used the second mnemonic, you'd be an idiot with rubbish taste. [citation needed]

When he's not waffling on about mnemonics, Charles Fudgemuffin is also the author of numerous fiction books, which are available for kindle from Amazon.