How to make good flashcards: the rules, with examples

A good flashcard asks a question that has only one short answer, which you can judge right or wrong without hesitating. It forces you to fetch the information from your memory, which is the very mechanism of active recall.

The simplest test: if, when you flip the card, you often think "more or less", it is badly built. Either the question is vague, or the answer contains too much. In both cases, the spaced repetition algorithm receives false information and schedules the card poorly.

• One idea per card. If the answer consists of several independent items, make several cards. Each will have its own rhythm: you won't review five times what you know because of one forgotten part.
• A precise question. "Glycolysis?" calls for no verifiable answer. "What is the net ATP yield of glycolysis?" does.
• Put it in your own words. Copying the handout word for word produces long, passive cards. Rephrasing forces you to understand, and that work is already part of learning.
• A well-placed cloze deletion. The blank should cover the key information, not a word you can guess from context. One blank per card, or several blanks that each generate their own card.
• Images when the information is visual. For an anatomy diagram, a geography map or a circuit, image occlusion hides an area and asks you to name it.
• Avoid lists. "Name the eight causes of…" is a very hard card to retain. Prefer one card per item, or a mnemonic followed by one card per item.
• Both directions for vocabulary. In languages, one card from your native language to the target language and another in the opposite direction: recognizing a word and producing it are two different skills. See learning vocabulary.
• Context when needed. If a question can have two answers depending on the subject, add a short prefix: "Civil law:" or "Pharmacology:".

Here are typical student cards, and their corrected version.

Notice that the good version is often longer on the front and shorter on the back. That is normal: the question carries the precision, the answer stays brief.

Cloze deletion suits sentences whose wording matters: a legal definition, a theorem statement, a grammar rule. It keeps the context around the information to retain.

Question and answer works better when you want to practice producing a line of reasoning or an isolated piece of information, without help from the sentence. In medicine, for example, "What is the first-line treatment for…?" forces your memory harder than a sentence to complete.

Mathematical or chemical formulas display cleanly in both formats; asking to reproduce a complete formula is better than hiding a single guessable symbol.

Shared decks save time, especially for standardized content such as vocabulary. But making your own cards has two advantages: rephrasing is a first round of learning, and the cards match your course, your teachers and what comes up in your exams.

A good compromise: start from a deck shared by a classmate from the same cohort, then delete, correct and add to the cards that don't match your handout.

Yes, ideally. On the evening of the lecture, you still remember what the teacher emphasized, the example given in the lecture hall, the question that gave you trouble. A week later, all that is left is the handout.

A simple method:

• During the lecture or right after, highlight on the handout what deserves a card, and write your questions in the margin.
• In the evening, go back over only the highlighted passages and turn them into cards, following the rules above.
• Start reviewing the very next day, so that spaced repetition kicks in early.
• When a card gives you trouble during review, fix it right away instead of putting up with it.

In Mnemesia, cards are made next to the course. The workshop opens the handout you annotated (highlighter, pen, notes, sticky notes) next to the deck you are writing: you read a highlighted passage and write the card without switching apps. See also annotating your PDF lecture notes.

• Capture an area of the PDF: crop a diagram or a table from the handout and send it straight to a card.
• Cloze deletion, on the Anki model, for definitions and statements.
• Image occlusion, to hide the labels of a diagram and recall them one by one.
• Mathematical and chemical formulas, written in LaTeX notation and displayed cleanly.
• A "notes and mistakes" deck per handout, to store what you miss in reviews or MCQs.

The cards are then scheduled by FSRS. A deck can be shared as a single file, images included, to swap with your class. Mnemesia is free and needs no account: download the app.