Short articles often only contain 4 or 5 significant points that can more or less be associated with a 6 to 9 letter word or words from the title of the article. That connection actually makes a great summary of the article from your point of view. Close to a mind map and with focus it is also more useful for review. In Analograffiti you're not limited to just one 2 words like for the ABC list and you're actually including more of your multiple intelligences by adding drawing. This helps you to think about and summarise the ABC list.
If you have less than 20 words on your ABC list it is no longer a list and what I've been suggesting with analograffiti is really using a modified ABC list... instead of the list form and order from our alphabet the list takes the order of a significant word. Instead of writing it in list form and because we have fewer than twenty words we draw out our ideas and make further associations. This makes up for the lack when we cannot get 20 words onto an ABC list froms something like a "short" article. The reason 20, probably thats because its 4 5ths of the list and as far as an ABC list anything less doesn't have enough connections to make it memorable to help fill in the gaps of your memory web. Given that 95% of the ABC list will have problems with X y and most of all Z, many ABC list are as complete as they can get at 20.
With a list of 20 you have more associations than if you only made a list with 11 or 15. In which case you would be better served to have used a cue word rather than the ABC list.
Remember also that ABC list can be and often are creater over days rather than minutes.
Actually once you've created an analograffiti you don't need to look at the original creation to review it. You only need to spell out the letters of the cue word and like with ABC list you can play at recalling it during your piggy bank times.
Alex
[This message has been edited by AlexK (edited October 31, 2003).]
