Hey @tsmith888! From one Tim to another, welcome!
All good questions. It can be pretty confusing at first, and there a wide range of opinions here, so take them all with with a grain of salt, including mine!
First, the Major System is based on SOUNDS. It is NOT based on the letters. The “C” there ins SauCe makes a “Suh” sound. Two “Suh” SOUNDS encode to 00.
A great example of this “sound, not letter” thing would be the word “CeLLoPHaNe,” which would decode to 0582
C makes “Suh” sound (0)
LL makes just a SINGLE “Luh” sound (5) (another Major System rule, two letters but just one SOUND made by them.)
PH makes a “Fuh” sound (8)
N make “Nuh” sound (2)
Its important to learn to associate the sounds, not the letters.
There is no such thing as “better” when it comes to technique or system. There is no “agreement” because its impossible to create a silver bullet technique that fits everyone’s preferred style. We all have different connections, associations, and experiences which inform how quickly or easily we take to one system or another.
I don’t know about “most” here. If your brain easily associates initials with people, it might work well to use the Dominic System to generate your people. I don’t like it too much as a component of a PAO because I think it creates too many extra conversion steps in the learning process. I prefer using the Major System to generate every element in my PAO system because they can all then be directly read from the number itself.
As far as whether using certain words or is “acceptable,” you can approach system building however you want. The important thing is that it makes sense to you and you can easily figure out how to encode and decode from it. The goal of a system is to eventually not need it any more. You want to build fluency so that you no longer need to step through conversions actively, the numbers just become the image elements that you need when you need them.
I would recommend avoiding mixing systems or using too many exceptions to your rules when building it, simply because you’ll need to keep track of what follows what rule or system for every element. This can slow you down and cause frustration, not to mention the extra brainpower and focus needed to remember the exceptions when learning or practicing.
For a few more thoughts on practicing PAO and an example of one way to do a complete Major System build, check these posts out: