Create a Strong Password

So to begin with, here are some poor decisions to make with your passwords:

DON'T write your password down on a sticky note and put it on your monitor, your pullout writing board or write it on your white board.

DON'T  say the letters and numbers in your password as you type them in.

DON'T use your child's name, your spouses name, your pet's name, your maiden name, or your parent's name.  I'll tell you how you can "sort of" do this later in this post.

And

DON'T tell all your friends, coworkers, or family your passwords.  The only exception to this is to tell your spouse/significant other the real important ones so they can get to money accounts or life insurance sites if you should pass away.

OK, Now let's build a strong password that the internet won't tell you is weak.

Start by reading the 3 appendices I have included.  I promise I am going to use information in those, so if you don't want to get lost, read them first:

Creating a Strong Password-Appendix-1 - Rules
Create a Strong Password Appendix 2 - Ciphers
Create a Strong Password Appendix 3 - Special Characters

Make sure you do at least 3 of the following steps to ensure the password you end up with is strong enough.

Step #1  Choose something you can remember
This is ok to choose a word that means something to you, a name, a thing, a building, a date, a former address (some of these are pretty strong all by themselves), anything that means something to you and that you can remember.

For an example for all these steps, I am going to use the word ANTELOPE

Step #2 write the word backwards (reverse cipher)

  ANTELOPE backwards is   EPOLETNA              (getting stronger already)

Step #3  Use a substitution cipher

I am going to use the following key for this step:

ABCDEFGHIJKLM
TUVWXYZNOPQRS 

so, substituting the letters from the word  
          EPOLETNA
from the key above, we get
           XJIRXAHT

(Remember, you can create your own cipher key to make it unique to you)

Step #4 Focus on repeating letters and substitute a number or special character in its/their place.
in our result from the last step   XJIRXAHT,    the letter X appears twice.

So I am going to substitute a + sign in place of the 2nd X so we get:
           XJIR+AHT

Step #5 Use both Upper and Lower Case Letters

           XjiR+aHt     Simple enough?

Step #6  Replace either a number or special character in your results

We want both numbers and special characters in there to keep the rule makers happy, so I am going to  replace the letter i with the number 1

           Xj1R+aHt


Step #7 Choose a letter to put one last special character substitution to finish it off.

That letter H is calling out to me, so I am going to replace it with 2 square braces [  ]  and a hyphen -  like this:

           Xj1R+a]-[t

And there it is!!               Xj1R+a]-[t          This is my new strong password.

with those special characters, the length turned out to be 10 characters long.  The longer the password, the more secure it becomes.

If I put this in a few password strength testers I get the following results:

http://www.passwordmeter.com/

https://howsecureismypassword.net/

I'd love to hear any of your own methods of building a stronger password.