Part 3: The Mental Model — Notes, Note Types, Fields & Cards

Why This Is the Part That Matters

When people first open Anki, they usually assume it works like a stack of paper index cards: you write a question on the front, an answer on the back, and that's a "card." That picture isn't wrong, exactly — but it's incomplete, and the missing piece causes most of the confusion beginners run into later. Why does editing one thing change two cards at once? Why does a "Cloze" thing make three cards from one sentence? Why is there a "note type" menu at all? Every one of those questions dissolves the moment you understand the real model underneath.

Here's the short version, and we'll spend the rest of this part unpacking it: in Anki, you type information into a note, and Anki builds cards out of that note for you. The note is the raw material. The cards are the finished flashcards you actually review. They are not the same thing, and keeping them separate in your head is the single biggest mental upgrade you can make as a new user.

🧠 Mindset

If this feels abstract on the first read, that's completely normal — you can't quite "feel" the note-versus-card distinction until you've made a few cards yourself (that's Part 4). Read this part once now to plant the idea, then come back to it after you've added some cards. It will click on the second pass. You haven't misunderstood it — you just haven't lived it yet.

The payoff for getting this is real. Once the model is clear, you'll never again wonder why Anki did something surprising. You'll know exactly how many cards a note will create before you press Add. You'll edit information in one place and trust that every card built from it updates automatically. And when you eventually want to customize how your cards look, you'll know precisely where to go and why.

The Four Words: Note, Field, Note Type, Card

Anki's model is built from four words. Learn these four and their relationships and you've learned the hard part.

1. A Note

A note is a single piece of information you enter — one fact, one concept, one word and its meaning. When you sit down and type "the French word chien means dog," you're creating one note. A note is the unit of information. It is not the thing you review; it's the source the reviewable cards are drawn from.

📖 Definition

Note: A single stored item of information in your collection. You create it once, edit it in one place, and Anki generates one or more review cards from it.

2. Fields

A note is made of fields — the labeled boxes you type into. A simple note might have just two fields called Front and Back. A vocabulary note might have three: Word, Meaning, and Example. Fields are simply the slots that hold the different parts of your information. When you're in the Add window, each field is one of the boxes on screen waiting for text (or an image, or audio).

Fields also carry small settings of their own — for example, whether a field is "sticky" (keeps its content after you add a card, handy when many cards share a source or a tag) and how its text is formatted. We'll touch those lightly in Part 4; for now, just hold the idea that a field is a named container inside a note.

3. A Note Type (historically called a "model")

A note type is the blueprint. Older Anki documentation and some add-ons still call this a model, so if you see that word, it means the same thing. A note type defines two things:

Which fields a note has — for example, the "Basic" note type gives every note a Front and a Back.
One or more card templates — the rules that say which fields appear on the front of a card and which appear on the back.

Every note you make belongs to exactly one note type, and that choice determines everything about the cards you'll get. Choosing the note type is the first real decision you make each time you add information.

⚠️ Important: The note type is chosen per note, at the moment you add it, using the Type button in the Add window. Different notes in the same deck can use different note types — a deck is just a bucket cards live in for scheduling, not a rule about their structure.

4. A Card (and Card Templates)

A card is what you actually review — a front you try to answer and a back that reveals the answer. But here's the crucial part: you don't create cards directly. Anki creates them for you, using the card templates defined in the note's note type.

A card template is a little recipe that says, in effect, "put the Front field on the question side and the Back field on the answer side." A note type can hold more than one template. If it holds two, then every note of that type produces two cards. This is the mechanism behind the whole "one note, many cards" idea.

✅ Tip

A memory hook: the note is what you wrote; the cards are what you review. You write once; you review many times. Anki's job is turning the one thing you wrote into the several things you'll practice.

⚠️ Watch Out

Because cards are generated from notes, deleting things behaves in a way that surprises people. Deleting a card that is the only card of its note deletes the whole note. Deleting a note deletes all the cards built from it. We'll come back to this in Part 4 when we talk about the Browse window — just know now that the note is the thing that "really" exists, and cards hang off it.

Under the hood, card templates are written in a bit of HTML with {{FieldName}} placeholders where your field content gets dropped in, plus a shared styling section that controls fonts and colors. You do not need to touch any of that to use Anki well, and we'll deliberately defer deep template editing to much later. For now the takeaway is only this: templates decide which fields show where, and how many cards a note produces.

One Note, Many Cards — Worked Examples

Let's make the model concrete with the note types Anki ships with. The same single note behaves very differently depending on which note type you chose for it.

graph TD N["📝 One NOTE you type this once Fields: Word, Meaning"] NT["🧩 Note Type 'Basic (and reversed card)' holds 2 card templates"] C1["🃏 Card 1 Front: Word → Back: Meaning"] C2["🃏 Card 2 Front: Meaning → Back: Word"] N --> NT NT --> C1 NT --> C2

Read the diagram top to bottom: you enter one note, its note type contains two templates, so Anki hands you two cards — one asking each direction. You did the typing once; Anki did the duplicating.

The built-in note types

Note type	Cards it creates	Good for
Basic	1 card (Front → Back)	Straightforward one-direction facts: a question and its answer.
Basic (and reversed card)	2 cards (Front → Back and Back → Front)	Vocabulary and any pair you want to recall both ways.
Basic (optional reversed card)	1 or 2 cards, depending on whether you fill the "Add Reverse" field	Vocabulary where some entries deserve a reverse card and some don't.
Basic (type in the answer)	1 card, but you type your answer and Anki checks it	Exact spelling: terminology, foreign words, precise strings.
Cloze	One card per distinct cloze number in the text	Fill-in-the-blank recall inside a sentence or list (covered in Part 5).
Image Occlusion	One card per hidden region you draw (built into modern Anki)	Diagrams, maps, anatomy — anything visual and labeled (Part 5).

Walking through the counting

Say you're learning Spanish and you enter the note Word = "perro", Meaning = "dog".

Choose Basic → you get 1 card: shows "perro," you recall "dog."
Choose Basic (and reversed card) → you get 2 cards: one shows "perro" (recall "dog"), the other shows "dog" (recall "perro"). Same typing, double the practice, both directions.
Choose Cloze and write The Spanish for dog is {{c1::perro}} → you get 1 card that hides "perro" inside the sentence. Add a second blank with a different number and you'd get 2 cards. (Full cloze mechanics are Part 5.)

Why the model is worth the effort

Now the big payoff. Suppose a week later you notice a typo — you wrote "perO" instead of "perro." You fix it in the one note, and every card built from that note updates instantly, in both directions, keeping all their individual review schedules intact. You never hunt down separate copies. Edit the source, and the derived cards follow. That's the whole reason Anki separates notes from cards: information lives in one authoritative place, and the practice items are generated views of it.

🛠️ How To: Inspect a Note Type

What you'll do: Open a note type, look at its fields and its card templates, and predict exactly which cards a note of that type will spawn — so nothing Anki does ever surprises you again.

Step by step

From the main Anki window, open Tools → Manage Note Types. You'll see the list of note types in your collection (Basic, Cloze, and any others).
Click a note type to select it, then click Fields… This shows the named boxes that notes of this type will have — for "Basic," you'll see Front and Back.
Back in the list, with the same note type selected, click Cards… This opens the template editor. Count the tabs at the top: each tab is one card template, which means one card per note. "Basic" has one; "Basic (and reversed card)" has two.
Read the Front Template and Back Template panels. The {{Front}} and {{Back}} placeholders show you which field lands on which side. You don't need to change anything — just observe.
Close the dialogs. You can also reach the same information faster from the Add window: click the Type button to switch note types and see the fields update live before you commit.

💡 Tip

If you're ever unsure how many cards a note will create, the quickest answer is: open Cards… and count the template tabs (for Cloze it's "one per distinct c1, c2… number in your text" instead). Resist the urge to edit templates while you're learning — reading them is enough, and a stray change to a template affects every note of that type.

Best Practices

✅ Do's

Think in notes, not cards, when you write. Ask "what information am I capturing?" and let the note type worry about how many cards result — it keeps your input clean.
Pick the note type before you type. The Type button is the first decision; choosing it up front means the right fields are waiting for you.
Fix mistakes in the note. Editing the source note updates every card built from it, so you only correct anything once.
Match the note type to the job: Basic for one-way facts, reversed for vocabulary, Cloze for context, type-in for exact spelling.

❌ Don'ts

Don't imagine cards as independent files. They're generated from notes; treating them as separate copies leads to confusion when edits ripple across them.
Don't edit card templates while you're still learning. A template change hits every note of that type — powerful later, risky now.
Don't panic when deleting a card removes a note. That's expected behavior for a note's only card; it isn't a bug.
Don't confuse note types with decks. Note types define structure; decks are just buckets for scheduling. They're independent choices.

💡 Pro Tips

Whenever Anki does something you didn't expect with card counts, your first move is: check the note type's templates. The answer is almost always there.
Say the four words out loud in order — note, field, note type, card — until the chain feels automatic. It's the backbone of every later feature.

📓 Learning Journal

Keep a journal as you work through this guide — digital or paper. After each part, jot down:

Key ideas you learned
Things that clicked for you
Questions or confusion points to revisit
Ideas you want to try
Your progress and how you feel about it

✍️ This part's prompt: Think about the material you actually want to learn right now — a language, a subject, a skill. For two or three of those items, which note type fits best, and why? Where would a reversed card genuinely help, and where would it just double your workload for no gain? Write down your reasoning; you'll test it against reality in Part 4.

📝 Part Summary

🎓 Key Takeaways

A note is a piece of information you type once; a card is a reviewable item Anki generates from that note — they are not the same thing.
A note holds fields (named boxes), and its note type (once called a "model") defines both the fields and the card templates.
Card templates decide which fields appear on front vs. back and therefore how many cards a note produces — Basic makes 1, reversed makes 2, Cloze makes one per cloze number.
Edit the note and every card built from it updates automatically, each keeping its own schedule.

🎉 What You Can Now Do

You can now look at any note type and predict exactly what cards it will create, explain why editing one note changes several cards, and choose the right note type for a given kind of material. This is the conceptual foundation the rest of the guide builds on — with it in place, actually making cards in the next part will feel obvious rather than mysterious.

❓ Common Questions

Is a "deck" the same as a "note type"?

No — and this is a common mix-up. A note type defines the structure of your information (its fields and templates). A deck is just a container that groups cards for reviewing and scheduling. A single deck can hold cards from many different note types, and cards from one note type can be spread across many decks.

If I change a card template, does it affect cards I already made?

Yes. Templates belong to the note type, not to individual cards, so a change applies to every existing and future note of that type. That's why it's powerful for consistency but risky to fiddle with while you're still learning — leave templates alone until you have a clear reason to change them.

Why does Anki call a note type a "model" in some places?

"Model" is the older internal name for the same thing. Newer versions of Anki mostly say "note type" in the interface, but add-ons, older guides, and some menus may still use "model." Whenever you see it, read it as "note type."

🔭 Up Next

In the next part, Your First Cards — Basic, Reversed & the Editor, we put this model to work: we'll open the Add window, choose a note type and deck, use the editor toolbar, and actually create your first batch of cards — including reversed cards for vocabulary.

📚 Additional Resources

🌟 Keep Going

You just learned the idea that separates confident Anki users from frustrated ones. If it still feels a little slippery, that's fine — it settles the moment you start making cards. Come back to this page any time; it isn't going anywhere.

📖 Part 3: The Mental Model — Notes, Note Types, Fields & Cards

📚 What You'll Learn