I got thinking about learning 3 letter combinations: AAA-ZZZ; but then I thought that what people most want are consonant vowel consonant 3 letter combinations since so many words start with that pattern. Eg. CON for 'concentrate', 'continue' but CNO or NCO would be less useful a 3 letter combination to know as a memory image.

But then I thought that, when I attempt shorthand, I sometimes remove vowels from a word and write a few consonants as a quick way to write a word. Eg. WRT rather than 'WRiTe'; or CNC as a prompt for 'CoNCentrate'.

So a system for memorising 3 characters, in general, would be useful; but it would be huge.

I played with the idea of giving the 1000 cartoon men and 1000 cartoon women three letter first names; that way, in a lot of situations, a three letter spelling can be represented by one image. If a three letter combination is not in those systems then you need another approach.

eg. Having a system of AA-ZZ images; and adding an A-Z image just after the AA-ZZ image. Eg. CBA would be "CB" image followed by "A" image.

Then I thought about cartoon robot images where the colour, head type, eyes type and body type would be based on the 3 letters I want to represent; and I also though tabout using the robot approach to make 4 letter robot images somewhere between AAAA and ZZZZ: The eyes of the 4 letter robots would be blue (colour chart colour '27/Q') and the eyes of the 3 letter robots would be white (colour chart colour '10/B'); and the colouring in of their mouths would be different too so that I could quickly visualise a robot and know that it represents a 3 letter spelling or a 4 letter spelling.

M I K E is spelled because it is the M colour, the I head/mouth, the K eyes and the E body. A 3 letter word would also have these physical features but the body type would not represent a letter: it would just add variety. If the word is MIK then I could derive a colour from the enumerated position of M, I and K in the alphabet and dividing by 26: M = 13th letter of alphabet, I = 9th letter, K = 11th letter; 13+9+11 = 33; 33 divided by 26 has left over 7. So use the 7th body image: Body G.

3 letter words - heads

4 letter words - heads

Eyes for 3 letter robots:

Eyes for 4 letter robots:

Bodies:

An example of usage: I could turn the first 4 letters of an event in history into a robot drawing; and then imagine the robot as a narrator talking about the historical event.

The 3 letter word robot could become a 4 letter word robot if you add a reflexive action to it:

4th Letter	Action
A	Affirmative nod
E	Electric sparks from the head
I	Torso spin 360 degrees
O	Oscillation side to side of hips
U	Head spin 360 degrees
L	Shoulders shudder in a shrug motion
N	Neck bends to the side and back upright
R	Hands spin around at the wrists
S	Steam emits from the head
T	Wrists extend a hand's length and back again
Other	Neck extends a neck's length and back again

So if the robot itself represents POL, the 'I' reflexive action would make it represent POLI. If the action is 'Other' (brief neck extension) then deduce that the POL is followed by a letter not already listed such as Y, T, V.

Similarly, the reflexive actions could help a 4 letter robot to represent 5 letters; or the reflexive action might be a way to distinguish ideas that are spelled the same. Eg. 2 people named Mike (MIKE) would be represented by pretty much the same robot image but its reflexive actions would be different.

Note: I wrote other articles about representing spellings of three letters. Eg. The Music Spelling article, the Taxi Driver article and the Foreign Language article.

5000 People System as 3 Letter Spellings

The 5000 People System involves one of 50 syllables followed by one of 100 syllables to spell a unique word: the name of the person. And that represents 4 letters that can be handy if trying to memorise a word that begins 'BABU': you can imagine the person BABU in a story scene to represent the concept. The 100 syllables are the same 100 syllables used throughout this course. Eg. See the 'People from 00 to 99' article. In the 5000 people system, the first 50 of those syllables are used in the first part of a name and then one of the 100 syllables is used in the second part of the name.

But you could instead use 50 single letters as the start of the person's name: A(1), B(1), C(1) all the way to Y(1); and then A(2), B(2), .... all the way to Y(2). Then the next part of the person's name can be one of 100 choices: A(1), B(1), C(1) to Y(1), A(2), B(2), C(2) to Y(2), A(3), B(3), C(3) to Y(3), A(4), B(4), C(4) to Y(4).

So now, a three letter word can have its first two letters represented definitively and then its third letter is related to the bracketed numbers. Eg. CAB might be C(1), A(1) and then the fact that there is a '1 then a 1' might imply A/B/C as the final letter; whereas C(1), A(2) might imply CA followed by a letter within D/E/F.

Developing this idea, I might not stick to A/B/C but choose different letter choices based on one commonly used letter and some lesser used letters.

Set	50 Set	Second Syllable set of 25	Choice of Letters
1	Normal First 50	1	AXY
2	Add 50 to Reach the Next 50 Syllables	2	DEF
3	Normal First 50	3	BGHI
4	Add 50 to Reach the Next 50 Syllables	4	JKLW
5	Normal First 50	1	SOZ
6	Add 50 to Reach the Next 50 Syllables	2	PQR
7	Normal First 50	3	MTU
8	Add 50 to Reach the Next 50 Syllables	4	CNV