Contents
Deck
The deck stores all your cards and scheduling information. It is saved in a file with a name ending in .anki
The two core objects in an Anki deck are facts (on the left) and cards (on the right).
Facts
A fact is a single piece of information, made up of a number of fields. For example:
- Expression: a giraffe
- Meaning: an animal with a long neck
- Example: giraffes live in the zoo
- Tags: animals, my text book chapter 3
Cards
A card is a presentation of a fact, and has two sides: a question and an answer. Any number of fields can appear on each side.
When you add a fact to Anki, cards which show that fact are generated. Some models generate one card, others generate more than one. For example, in the Japanese model, two cards are generated:
Card 1 (production)
Question:
- an animal with a long neck
Answer:
- a giraffe
- giraffes live in the zoo
This card is called a production card, because it requires you to produce the expression.
Card 2 (recognition)
Question:
- a giraffe
Answer:
- an animal with a long neck
- giraffes live in the zoo
Recognition cards train your recognition of an expression. This is useful for languages that use a foreign script like Chinese characters.
Tags
Tags are little pieces of information attached to cards to help you organize your deck. You can make cards with some tags appear at a higher or lower priority, and display only cards matching certain tags.
The most commonly used tags are fact tags. Fact tags apply to all cards made with a given fact. So in the above example, both cards would be tagged with 'animals' as they are made from the same fact.
Card tags are specific to a single card.
There are other types of tags, described below.
Models
A model describes the type of information you want to input, and the type of cards which should be generated. This includes:
Fields: in the case of an English deck, this may be "Expression, "Meaning" and "Example"
Card models: A series of templates for cards. There are two default cards, described above.
Model tags: a list of tags to be applied to all cards in this model.
Most users will only need one or two models in their deck. Models are named things like "English" or "Russian verbs".
Why not just "Russian" and tag facts as verbs or non-verbs, you may ask. If verbs and non-verbs require the same level of information, this is indeed a good idea. But in the case of Russian, verbs often come in pairs, and studying them together can make things easier.
Spaced Repetition
See Wikipedia
Spaced cards
If you have a model with two cards:
question -> answer
answer -> question
then showing one after the other would not be useful. Anki puts a delay between the cards (spaces the cards apart). This starts off at 10 minutes and gets bigger as the cards become easier.
Suspended cards
Suspended cards are cards that have been removed from the review process. You can suspend cards by adding 'suspended' to the list of tags, or adding a tag to the list of suspended tags in the deck properties.
Minimum spacing
The minimum amount of minutes cards will be spaced apart.
Minimum interval multiplier
Imagine you have two cards. One card has an interval of 4 days. The other card has an interval of 10 days. The minimum interval is 4 days. Using the default multiplier of 0.1, 4 x 0.1 = 0.4, so the next card will be spaced 0.4 days away (about 9 1/2 hours later).
Features
Features are tags which activate special functionality in Anki. At the moment the only special features which are supported are automatic reading generation for Japanese and Chinese readings. Usually you do not need to change this field.
Question/answer format
A template for how to display a question or answer. Consider the following template:
This is the question %(Reading)s %(Meaning)s
The items in brackets refer to fields of a fact. Imagine Reading = "a" and Meaning = "b". Then the question would be displayed as:
This is the question a b
Make sure you include the trailing 's' - it is needed. You won't need to use anything but an 's', but for the curious, the text is a python format string
Young cards
Cards that have been seen before, but have a low interval.
Mature cards
Cards that have an interval over 21 days. When you fail a mature card, it will be shown the next day instead of 10 or 20 minutes later.
Show failed cards early
Usually when you fail a card, it will be displayed 10 or 20 minutes later. When this option is enabled, and you have finished all your reviews and have no new cards waiting, Anki will start showing you failed cards early, from oldest first. This means that you don't have to wait up to 20 minutes to be able to answer a card again that you failed earlier.
Maximum failed cards
Anki limits failed cards to 20 by default. When this limit is reached, the next card shown will be the oldest failed card. If you keep failing cards, you will cycle through the list of failed cards.
Duplicate fields
By default, Anki prevents you from entering the same information twice. If you try to add the same information twice, the field will turn red and Anki will prevent you from continuing. If you wish to add duplicate information, click the edit model button up the top (next to the green cross), click the fields tab, choose the field you want, and disable the "unique?" checkbox.
Required fields
Not all fields are required in Anki - sometimes notes or references aren't necessary. You can control which fields are required by opening the 'edit model' dialog as described above, and disabling the "required?" checkbox.
New cards per day
Anki limits the number of new cards per day to 20 by default. You can adjust this number in the deck preferences if you want to, but be careful not to set the number too high, or you may become overwhelmed with reviews.