A Microtheme on Microthemes

Published 2026/02/16

Microthemes are prose that serve as a short essay on a topic. My friend, sirlilpanda, introduced me to them with his article¹. This article discusses the origin of Microthemes, the value I believe they can provide me and other people like me, and how I intend to use them going forward.

What are they?

In an education context, microthemes are employed with the dual purpose of teaching particular topic and simultaneously progressing the student’s formal writing skills². Their short form reduces burden on both student and marker, and may be used as pathway to writing longer form essays².

The exact form of a microtheme varies, with suggested lengths in the range of 100-500 words², short enough to be typed on a 5 by 8 inch card³, and 5 to 10 sentences⁴ to name a few. Various structures have been suggested in the literature⁵, with different educational goals.

Why do I care?

The context I care about isn’t marking student’s papers. (Though perhaps I may one day, let’s file that in the back of the memory.) I do however, care about making sure that I retain the information that I have learnt. In my immediate – organic – memory for short term use, and in written storage (e.g. this website), for long term use.

The principles of writing a microtheme are remarkably similar to a method that I “invented” in the first year of my undergraduate degree. I called my method “toolboxing” and it consistened of writing brief articles of what I learnt in each course with the rationale that they could serve as a “toolbox” of skills for me to rely upon as a graduated engineer. I started this toolbox in a TiddlyWiki⁶ but have since moved most of my work to markdown.

I found toolboxing an effective method for synthesising what I learnt, and it proved particularly valuable when revising for tests and exams. I struggled to maintain the same level of commitment to it that I showed early in my degree due to the breadth and depth of content covered in a semester. Despite this, some form of toolboxing has always stuck in my revision habits.

So what?

It’s my intent to write some more microthemes, in the form of articles on my website. sirlilpanda would quite like it if I keep up a cadence of one a week, but I think that isn’t realistic. Especially if I wish to write up some larger projects as well. We shall see!

Appendix: A note on the sources

The primary source on microthemes should be the text³. Unfortunately, this particular text is not accessible for most people – including myself. The claims that I have made about it have been drawn from my reading of the secondary sources which reference the text²⁴⁵.

Footnotes