Quintilian is skeptical of the art of memory. His preferred scheme is to divide words on the page intosmall, memorizable chunks, each subdivision serving as a sort oflocusin page-space. Indeed, Quintilian even suggests thatthe best mnemonic image one can construct is simply an image of the tablet or papyrus on which one wrote (11.2.27–32).

He concludes his memory section by defendingvisual mnemonics against authorities like Erasmus who doubt its efficacy.

He suggests using beasts that stand for letters of the alphabet, andthen assigning images to various parts of each animal—“in the Head, the Bellie, in the Taile, in theformer parte of the legges, & also in the hinder part.”

Wilson next exploresAd Herennium’stechnique of visual homophony, such as remembering a man named Wingfeelde by picturing“thewing of a birde, and a greene feelde to walke in.”

Methodaids the mental grasping—the memory—of the complex content with which one is engaged; it“relieve[s]theburdenplacedonmemory,”writes Sharon Crowley,“by calling on the assistance of reason”(35).

They were also instructed not to mark or write on the word list, and not to use their mobile phones or any other electronic devices or aids to assist in the activity.

My wife taught me to add some color after some pages are filled and the more I do that, the more I like browsing through the journal. Watercolor is still too heavy for most notebooks and I don’t bother to bring colored pencils on location. That’s a relaxing activity to do at home.

The very act of recording your actions and impressions is itself powerfully mnemonic, fixing the moment more durably in your memory so that it’s easier to recall in future, even if you never consult your notes.

Among the many responses to my request for a mnemonic sentencefore, the following seemed to me particularly noteworthy:To expresse, remember to memorize a sentence to simplify this.( John L. Greene, Beverly Hills, California.)To disrupt a playroom is commonly a practice of children.( Joseph J. Guiteras, Baldwinsville, New York.)By omnibus I traveled to Brooklyn. (David Mage, New York, NewYo r k . )It enables a numskull to memorize a quantity of numerals. (GeneWidhoff, Burbank, California.)TheEnciclopedia universal ilustrada, in an article on “Mnemo-tecnia,” gives the following Spanish sentence fore:Te ayudar arecordar la cantidad a indoctos si relesme bien. Several Italian versesforewill be found on page 755 ofMatematica Dilettevole e Curiosaby Italo Ghersi.

I know of no similar aids in English to recalle, the other commontranscendental number. However, if you memorizeeto five deci-mal places (2.71828), you automatically know it to nine, becausethe last four digits obligingly repeat themselves (2.718281828). InFranceeis memorized to 10 places by the traditional memory aid:Tu aideras rappeler ta quantit beaucoup de docteurs amis.Perhapssome reader can construct an amusing English sentence that willcarryeto at least 20 decimals.

Dictionary writers list polysemes under the same entry; homonyms are defined separately.

what does xdg stand for? Its hard to remember without knowing that.

A good trick to remember on to vs. onto is to mentally say “up” before on in a sentence. If it still makes sense, then onto is probably the correct choice.

Constructing Noah’s Arkis representative of a genre, traditional in Hugh’s time andmilieu, of meditational compositions based on the various buildings whose plans aredescribed in the Bible. These included, most notably, the Tabernacle in Exodus 25ff, Solo-mon’s Temple in 1 Kings 6, the Temple and its platform in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 40ff ),the Heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation 20, and Noah’s Ark (Genesis 6). All these structures,including the Ark, were analyzed as avatars of one another, and of Christ and the Church,following the statement in Hebrews 8: 2–6 that Christ is the true tabernacle, the patternof the structure revealed to Moses. One of the earliest representatives of the genre stillextant is Gregory the Great’s set of sermons on Ezekiel 40, though there is good reasonto believe that its origins lie in the meditational practice of the early desert fathers andin Jewish spiritual traditions of the first century.

Cortisol is a BIG FIB.