Mnemonic/Catalogs/List of mnemonics in English

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.

Miscellanous

• BRASS: Breathe, Relax, Aim, Sight, Squeeze. (How to shoot a rifle.)