📖 Part 4: Your First Cards — Basic, Reversed & the Editor

Time to actually make cards. With the note-and-card model from Part 3 in hand, the Add window will feel less like a puzzle and more like a form — one you'll soon fill out without thinking. Let's get comfortable.

📚 What You'll Learn

By the end of this part, you'll understand:

How the Add window works — choosing a Type and a Deck, filling fields, and the keyboard shortcut that speeds it all up
When to reach for Basic, Basic (and reversed card), Basic (optional reversed card), and Basic (type in the answer)
What the editor toolbar does — formatting, media, cloze, MathJax, and the HTML editor
How to write a clear first card, and how editing or deleting cards works later in the Browse window
How Anki's duplicate detection quietly protects you from making the same card twice

In This Part

The Add Window

Everything in this part happens in one place: the Add window. Open it from the main screen with the Add button, or press the A key. It's a small, focused window, and once you know its three moving parts you can add hundreds of cards without friction.

At the top left is the Type button. This is where you pick the note type — the blueprint from Part 3 — and it decides which fields you'll see and how many cards you'll get. At the top right is the Deck button, which chooses where the resulting cards land for scheduling. Below those sit the fields (the labeled boxes), and beneath them the editor toolbar. When you've filled the fields, you press Add — or, far faster, Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac).

🧠 Mindset

Your first few cards will probably be a little clumsy — too long, two facts crammed into one, a front that's really a statement instead of a question. That's completely fine and expected. Making imperfect cards and improving them is how everyone learns; you don't need to write perfect cards yet. Part 6 is entirely about the craft of good cards. For now, the goal is simply to make some.

⚠️ Important: The Type and Deck you choose stick for the next card you add, so set them once at the start of a session and you rarely need to touch them again. Always glance at both before your first Add of a session — it's the easiest way to avoid dropping cards into the wrong deck.

A nice detail: the Add window stays open after you add a card, clearing the fields (or keeping the "sticky" ones) so you can immediately type the next one. That's what makes rapid batch entry possible, which we'll lean on in the How To below.

The Basic Family: Which One, When

Four of the built-in note types start with the word "Basic," and choosing between them is most of the decision-making you'll do when adding simple cards. Here's each one with a concrete example.

Basic

Two fields, Front and Back, and it makes one card: front is the question, back is the answer. Reach for it whenever recall only needs to go one direction.

📖 Example

Front: "In what year did the Berlin Wall fall?" → Back: "1989." You'll never need to be shown "1989" and asked for the event, so one direction is right.

Basic (and reversed card)

Same Front and Back fields, but it makes two cards — front→back and back→front. This is the vocabulary workhorse: you learn to go from the foreign word to your language and back.

📖 Example

Front: "chien" → Back: "dog." You'll get one card showing "chien" (recall "dog") and another showing "dog" (recall "chien"). One entry, two directions of practice.

Basic (optional reversed card)

Adds a third field called Add Reverse. If you put any text in it, you get the reverse card too; if you leave it blank, you don't. Use it when a single deck mixes entries — some worth reversing, some not — and you want to decide case by case without switching note types.

✅ Tip

A common convention is to type the letter y into the "Add Reverse" field for the entries you want reversed. Any non-empty value works; y is just quick to type.

Basic (type in the answer)

Looks like Basic, but when you review, Anki gives you a text box to type your answer, then shows a character-by-character comparison against the correct text. Excellent for anything where exact spelling matters — foreign vocabulary, precise terminology, chemical names.

⚠️ Watch Out

Type-in is great for short, exact answers and frustrating for long ones — a single stray space or accent counts as wrong. Save it for words and short strings, not full sentences. Under the hood it relies on a {{type:Field}} instruction in the template, which we'll revisit in Part 5.

Choose…	When you want…	Cards produced
Basic	A one-direction fact	1
Basic (and reversed card)	Both directions, every time	2
Basic (optional reversed card)	Both directions, but only sometimes	1 or 2
Basic (type in the answer)	Exact spelling checked	1

The Editor Toolbar & Writing a Good First Card

The strip of icons above the fields is the editor toolbar. You won't need most of it on day one, but knowing what's there means you'll never feel stuck.

What the toolbar buttons do

Bold / Italic / Underline — the usual text formatting (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+U).
Subscript / Superscript — for chemistry and math, like H₂O or x² (Ctrl+= and Ctrl+Shift+=).
Lists — ordered and unordered lists, for the rare card that genuinely needs a few grouped items.
Cloze — the [...] button, used with the Cloze note type to hide text (all of Part 5).
Attach media — the paperclip adds an image or audio file; you can also drag an image straight into a field or paste one from the clipboard.
Record audio — the microphone records your own voice, handy for pronunciation.
MathJax / LaTeX — the function/equation button typesets math expressions beautifully.
HTML editor — Ctrl+Shift+X reveals the raw HTML behind a field, for when you want fine control. You can happily ignore this while learning.

What makes a good first card

The single most useful habit — and we'll go deep on it in Part 6 — is one fact per card. The front should be a clear question or prompt; the back should be the single, specific answer. If your back has three separate things you must recall, that's really three cards wearing a trenchcoat, and it will feel miserable to review. Split it.

Good: front "What organ produces insulin?" / back "The pancreas." Weak: front "Tell me about the pancreas" / back a paragraph — because "recall everything" isn't a question your memory can pass or fail cleanly. When in doubt, ask: could I grade my recall of this as simply right or wrong? If not, tighten it.

Editing and deleting later: the Browse window

You don't edit existing cards from the Add window — you use Browse (the Browse button on the main screen, or press B). Browse is a searchable table of every card and note in your collection. Click any card to edit its note's fields in the panel below; changes save automatically and, as you learned in Part 3, ripple to every card built from that note.

⚠️ Watch Out

Deleting in Browse follows the Part 3 rule: deleting a card that is the only card of its note deletes the whole note; deleting a note removes all its cards. If you meant to remove just one direction of a reversed pair but the note only has that card left, the note goes too. Nothing is truly lost until you sync or close — but it's worth pausing before a bulk delete.

Duplicate detection

As you type into the first field of a note, Anki quietly checks whether another note of the same type already starts with that text. If it finds a match, the field turns a warning color and a "duplicate" notice appears. It won't stop you from adding it — sometimes a duplicate is intentional — but it's a gentle heads-up that you may already have this card, which keeps your collection from filling up with accidental twins.

🛠️ How To: Add Your First Ten Cards

What you'll do: Open the Add window and create a small, real batch of cards — a mix of Basic facts and reversed vocabulary — using the fast keyboard workflow so it becomes muscle memory.

Step by step

On the main screen, click Add (or press A) to open the Add window.
Click Type and choose Basic. Click Deck and pick an existing deck — or click Add in that dialog to make a fresh one, e.g. "First Cards."
Click into the Front field and type a clear question. Press Tab to jump to Back and type the single answer.
Press Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on Mac) to add the card. The fields clear and the cursor is ready for the next one. Repeat until you have five or six Basic cards.
Now click Type and switch to Basic (and reversed card). Add a few vocabulary entries — a word in Front, its meaning in Back — pressing Ctrl+Enter after each. Each entry gives you two cards, so a handful gets you to ten quickly.
Close the Add window. Open Browse (B) to see everything you just made sitting in your deck, ready to study.

💡 Tip

The fastest add workflow is entirely keyboard-driven: Tab to move between fields, Ctrl/Cmd+Enter to add, and never touch the mouse. If several cards share a value — the same source book, chapter, or tag — mark that field sticky (the pin icon on the field) so it keeps its content between adds instead of clearing. Small thing, huge time saver over a long session.

Best Practices

✅ Do's

Confirm Type and Deck before you start typing. They stick, so setting them once at the top of a session prevents misfiled cards.
Write one fact per card. A card you can grade as simply right or wrong is a card that will actually train your memory.
Learn the two keyboard moves — Tab and Ctrl/Cmd+Enter. They turn adding cards from a chore into a rhythm.
Use reversed cards for vocabulary, where recalling both directions is genuinely useful.

❌ Don'ts

Don't cram multiple facts onto one card. A paragraph on the back is several cards in disguise and painful to review.
Don't ignore the duplicate warning without a glance — it usually means you really do already have the card.
Don't reach for the HTML editor or MathJax on day one. Plain text gets you a long way; add complexity only when a card truly needs it.
Don't reverse everything reflexively. One-direction facts don't benefit from a reverse card and just double your reviews.

💡 Pro Tips

Paste an image straight into a field with Ctrl/Cmd+V, or drag it in — no need to hunt for the paperclip.
If a batch of cards belongs together, mark a field sticky and reuse it; you'll add the whole set far faster.

📓 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: After adding your first ten cards, look back at them honestly. Which ones ask a clean, single-answer question, and which try to do too much? Rewrite one weak card into one (or several) sharper cards, and note what changed. What did the act of splitting it teach you about the fact itself?

📝 Part Summary

🎓 Key Takeaways

The Add window has three parts: Type (note type), Deck (where cards land), and the fields — fill them and press Ctrl/Cmd+Enter.
The Basic family covers most simple needs: Basic (1 card), reversed (2), optional reversed (1 or 2 via the Add Reverse field), and type in the answer (checks exact spelling).
The editor toolbar handles formatting, media, cloze, and MathJax; the HTML editor (Ctrl+Shift+X) is there when you need it.
Edit and delete existing cards in Browse; deleting a note's only card deletes the note, and duplicate detection warns you when the first field repeats an existing note.

🎉 What You Can Now Do

You can open the Add window, pick the right note type for the job, and add a batch of clean cards quickly with the keyboard — both one-direction facts and two-direction vocabulary. You also know where to go to fix or remove cards afterward. That's the core loop of feeding Anki information, and everything from here is refinement.

❓ Common Questions

I added a card to the wrong deck — can I move it?

Yes, easily. Open Browse, select the card (or several), right-click, and choose Change Deck. Moving cards between decks doesn't affect their review schedules — remember, decks are just buckets.

Can I change a card's note type after I've made it?

Yes. In Browse, select the note(s), right-click, and choose Change Note Type. Anki lets you map the old fields onto the new type's fields. It's occasionally useful — for example, if you realize a Basic card should have been reversed — though it's easier to pick correctly up front.

Do I have to click "Add," or is the shortcut enough?

The shortcut is all you need. Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on Mac) does exactly what the Add button does and keeps your hands on the keyboard, which is much faster for entering many cards.

🔭 Up Next

In the next part, Cloze Deletion & Other Card Types, we go beyond front-and-back: hiding words inside a sentence with cloze deletion, hiding labels on an image with Image Occlusion, and knowing when each type is the right tool.

📚 Additional Resources

🌟 Keep Going

You've made real cards — that's the moment Anki stops being a concept and becomes a tool you own. However rough those first ten feel, you now know the whole add-and-edit loop. Come back to this page whenever you need a refresher; it'll be right here.