Thursday 29 April 2010

Big Elephants . . .

. . . Are Useful

Who says?

I say!

After reading the book of the same name. To give it the full title:

Big elephants are useful, a compendium of mnemonics and idioms. By SJ Hartland


And, of course, that's a mnemonic for spelling 'beauty' etc.

It also has a 'motoring safety' section. You may have heard the acronym 'COAST' for:

Concentration
Observation
Attitude
Space
Time

The book includes 'CAT', for:
Concentrate
Anticipate
Tolerate

And an expansion of the 4xS principle, which I use as:
Safety
Smooth
System
Speed (although many people prefer 'system' as the second one)

The book suggests 5xS
Safety
Smooth
System
Style
Speed

- a variation on the oft-mentioned but rarely understood 'gloss' or 'finesse'.

Last one: 'Up up and away'

Any ideas? It's for parking your car on a hill! If the car's facing uphill, turn the front wheels away from the kerb, the idea being that if the handbrake fails then the car won't roll back down the hill.


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3 comments:

Jim said...

I'd not heard 'CAT' before but I really like that one.

The 5th 'S' I'd heard wasn't style but 'Sparkle' and used to represent the same thing.

Voyager said...

I find these new mnemonics too complicated to bother to remember and they all end up meaning the same thing don't they?

DR LAD = Don't ride like a dick.

:-)

Jim said...

DR LAD

Genius - I'm definitely going to use that one, cheers Voyager :)