The way I memorized it was to associate it with #{...} in ruby: def my_gimme(thing) gimme "select #{thing} from something" end Of course, in lisp, the

The way I memorized it was to associate it with #{...} in ruby: def my_gimme(thing) gimme "select #{thing} from something" end Of course, in lisp, the "interpolation" (and macros in general) is structural: you can't use malformed strings to inject unexpected code like you could in my silly example. Incidentally, Stuart Halloway uses this same Ruby syntax as pseudo-code when he first introduces macro syntax in his Programming Clojure book.