📖 Part 5: Cloze Deletion & Other Card Types

Front-and-back cards are the foundation, but some things are far easier to learn in context, or from an image, or by exact spelling. This part covers the card types that go beyond the basics — and, just as importantly, when not to use them.

📚 What You'll Learn

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

How cloze deletion works — the {{c1::...}} syntax, hints, and how cloze numbers control how many cards you get
The keyboard shortcuts that make clozing fast, and the difference between reusing a number and incrementing it
When cloze shines and when a plain question-and-answer card is the better choice
What Image Occlusion is for and how the workflow goes, at a high level
How type-in-the-answer cards work with {{type:Field}}, and that community note types exist for specialized needs

In This Part

Cloze Deletion: Recall in Context

Cloze deletion means hiding part of a sentence and recalling the missing piece in context. Instead of a separate question and answer, you write one true statement and blank out the part you want to remember. You then see the sentence with a gap and try to fill it. Because the surrounding words stay visible, cloze cards are wonderful for facts that only make sense as part of a larger idea.

The syntax is a small piece of markup you type into a Cloze note. Wrap the text you want to hide in double curly braces with a cloze number:

The capital of France is {{c1::Paris}}.

When you review this, Anki shows: "The capital of France is [...]." and you recall "Paris." One note, one blank, one card. The c1 is the cloze number — it's what lets a single note produce several cards, which is the key idea of the next section.

📖 Definition

Cloze deletion: A card format where you hide (delete) one or more parts of a sentence and recall them from the surrounding context, rather than answering a separate question. The hidden text is marked with {{cN::text}}.

🧠 Mindset

The {{c1::...}} syntax looks a bit technical the first time you see it, but you'll almost never type it by hand — there's a button and a keyboard shortcut that insert it for you. If the punctuation feels fiddly now, that's only because you haven't used the shortcut yet. Focus on the idea; the mechanics get automatic fast.

You can also give yourself a hint — a nudge shown in place of the blank — by adding a second :: and the hint text:

The capital of France is {{c1::Paris::a European city}}.

Now the card shows "The capital of France is [a European city]." Hints are useful when a blank would otherwise be impossible to guess, but use them sparingly — a hint that gives too much away turns recall into recognition.

Cloze Numbers, Hints & Fast Clozing

The cloze number is where the real power (and the most common confusion) lives. The rule is simple once you see it:

⚠️ Important: Blanks that share the same number are revealed together on one card. Blanks with different numbers each become their own separate card.

Same number → one card

Use the same number when the blanks belong to a single idea you want to recall all at once:

Water is made of {{c1::hydrogen}} and {{c1::oxygen}}.

This makes one card. Both blanks hide at the same time, and you recall "hydrogen and oxygen" together — appropriate, because they're two halves of one fact.

Different numbers → separate cards

Use different numbers when each blank is worth testing independently:

{{c1::Marie Curie}} won the Nobel Prize in {{c2::1903}}.

This makes two cards. On the first, the name is hidden and the year is shown; on the second, the year is hidden and the name is shown. Each blank is drilled on its own schedule from the same single note.

graph TD A["One Cloze note<br/>c1 = Marie Curie<br/>c2 = 1903"] B["c1 group"] C["c2 group"] D["🃏 Card 1<br/>hides 'Marie Curie'"] E["🃏 Card 2<br/>hides '1903'"] A --> B A --> C B --> D C --> E

Read it as: distinct cloze numbers split the one note into that many cards; repeated numbers merge back into a single card. That's the entire counting rule.

Making cloze fast

You rarely type the braces yourself. In a Cloze note, select the text you want to hide and use a shortcut:

Action	Shortcut	Effect
Cloze, same number	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`C` (`Cmd`+`Shift`+`C`)	Wraps the selection reusing the current highest number (groups blanks onto one card).
Cloze, next number	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`Alt`+`C` (or the toolbar `[...]` button)	Wraps the selection with the next incremented number (makes a new separate card).

So the workflow is: select a word, press the "same number" shortcut for blanks that should reveal together, or the "next number" shortcut for blanks that should be their own cards. The toolbar button behaves like the incrementing version, which is why clicking it repeatedly gives you c1, c2, c3, and so on.

When cloze shines — and when it doesn't

✅ Cloze is great for

Definitions and facts that need their surrounding context to make sense
Lists where the order doesn't matter — blank each item with its own number
Filling gaps in a sentence you already understand, like grammar patterns or quotations

⚠️ Reach for Basic Q&A instead when…

…the prompt is genuinely a question with a distinct answer ("What year did X happen?"), or when the sentence context would give the answer away, or when you'd have to hide so much of the sentence that nothing meaningful is left to cue you. If the "context" is really just the answer restated, a clean front-and-back card is better.

Image Occlusion, Type-in & Community Types

Image Occlusion — hiding parts of a picture

Image Occlusion is cloze deletion for images, and it's built into modern versions of Anki (no add-on needed). Instead of hiding words in a sentence, you hide regions of a picture — the labels on a diagram, the countries on a map, the bones in an anatomy figure — and recall what's underneath. For anything visual or spatial, it's transformative.

At a high level, the workflow goes like this:

In the Add window, choose the Image Occlusion note type and select your image.
Draw boxes (masks) over the parts you want to hide — one box per label or region.
Choose whether each box becomes its own card ("hide one, guess one") or whether all boxes hide together, depending on how you want to study.
Add the note. Anki generates one card per hidden region (or per group), each showing the image with that region covered.

Think of every mask as a cloze blank laid over the image: same idea, same "one region per card" logic, just visual instead of textual. It's ideal for diagrams you'd otherwise struggle to turn into words.

Type-in-the-answer — for exact spelling

We met Basic (type in the answer) in Part 4. Under the hood it works through a {{type:FieldName}} instruction in the card template — for example {{type:Back}} tells Anki to give you a text box during review and compare what you type, character by character, against the Back field. You can add this to your own templates too, but the built-in note type is the easy path.

⚠️ Watch Out

Type-in is excellent for exact spelling — foreign vocabulary, technical terms, precise names — where being almost right isn't good enough. It's genuinely annoying for long answers, though: one missing accent or extra space is flagged as wrong. Keep type-in cards to short, exact strings.

Community and custom note types

Beyond the built-ins, people have created and shared specialized note types — elaborate language-learning templates with example sentences and audio, science templates, and more. These often ride along inside shared decks: when you download and import a shared deck, its custom note types come with it and appear in your collection automatically. You don't need any of this to succeed with Anki, but it's good to know the ceiling is high when you're ready for it.

✅ Tip

You can mix note types freely. Many people keep a language deck that blends Cloze cards for grammar in context, reversed Basic cards for vocabulary, and type-in cards for tricky spellings — all studying together in one deck. Use whichever type fits each piece of material.

🛠️ How To: Turn a Paragraph into Cloze Cards

What you'll do: Take a short paragraph you're trying to learn and convert it into a set of well-judged cloze cards — one idea per card — using the cloze shortcuts.

Step by step

Open Add, click Type, and choose Cloze. Pick your deck.
Paste (or type) your paragraph into the Text field. Read it and decide which specific terms are actually worth recalling — usually just a few key words, not every noun.
Select the first key term and press the next-number cloze shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+C) or click the [...] toolbar button. It becomes {{c1::…}}.
Select the next term that deserves its own card and use the same next-number shortcut again — it becomes {{c2::…}}. If two words belong to one idea and should reveal together, use the same-number shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+C) so they share a number.
Optionally add a ::hint to any blank that would be unguessable on its own.
Press Ctrl+Enter to add. Anki creates one card per distinct cloze number, all sharing your paragraph as context.

💡 Tip

Resist over-clozing. If you hide five words in one short sentence, none of the blanks has enough context left to cue recall — you've made a guessing game, not a memory aid. A good rule: one meaningful blank (or one tightly-related group) per idea, and keep enough of the sentence visible that the blank is answerable. If a paragraph has many independent facts, it's often better as several separate short cloze notes than one crowded one.

Best Practices

✅ Do's

Match the number to the intent: same number for facts recalled together, different numbers for facts worth testing separately.
Use the shortcuts, not hand-typed braces. They're faster and you won't mismatch a brace.
Reach for Image Occlusion for anything visual — diagrams, maps, anatomy — where words would be clumsy.
Keep type-in cards short and exact, where precise spelling genuinely matters.

❌ Don'ts

Don't over-cloze a single sentence. Too many blanks leaves no context to cue you and turns recall into guessing.
Don't use cloze when a plain question fits better. If the context just restates the answer, a Basic card is clearer.
Don't lean on hints to make hard cards easy. A hint that reveals too much trains recognition, not recall.
Don't use type-in for long answers. A single stray character marks the whole thing wrong.

💡 Pro Tips

When importing a shared deck, glance at the note types it brings along — they can teach you clever template ideas you can reuse.
For lists where order doesn't matter, give each item its own cloze number so you drill each one independently rather than reciting the whole list at once.

📓 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: Look at something you're studying now. Which parts of it are better as cloze (facts in context, order-free lists), which as Image Occlusion (diagrams, maps), and which as plain Q&A? Try converting one paragraph into cloze cards and note how many distinct numbers you chose — and why you grouped or separated the blanks the way you did.

📝 Part Summary

🎓 Key Takeaways

Cloze deletion hides part of a sentence for recall in context, using {{c1::text}}, with an optional hint via {{c1::text::hint}}.
The same cloze number groups blanks onto one card; different numbers make separate cards — that's the whole counting rule.
Cloze fast with the shortcuts: Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+C reuses the number, Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Alt+C (or the toolbar button) increments it.
Image Occlusion is cloze for pictures (one card per masked region); type-in ({{type:Field}}) checks exact spelling; community note types arrive with shared decks.

🎉 What You Can Now Do

You can build cloze cards that test facts in context, control precisely how many cards a cloze note produces, and choose between cloze, Image Occlusion, type-in, and plain Q&A based on what you're actually trying to learn. You've now met the full range of everyday card types — the rest is judgment, which is exactly where the next part goes.

❓ Common Questions

Can a cloze note also show extra notes or context that's never hidden?

Yes. The Cloze note type includes an extra field (often called "Back Extra" or similar) whose contents appear on the answer side of every card but are never blanked out. It's perfect for a mnemonic, an explanation, or a source reference that you want to see when the answer is revealed.

Do I need an add-on for Image Occlusion?

Not in modern Anki — Image Occlusion is built in. Older versions relied on a popular add-on, so some tutorials still mention installing one, but current Anki ships with it ready to use as a note type.

What happens if I skip a cloze number, like using c1 and c3 but no c2?

Anki simply creates cards for the numbers that exist — so c1 and c3 give you two cards, and the missing c2 causes no problem. Numbers don't have to be consecutive; each distinct one you use becomes its own card.

🔭 Up Next

In the next part, Writing Cards That Actually Stick, we shift from mechanics to craft: the principles of minimum-information cards, avoiding interference, and writing prompts your future self can actually answer.

📚 Additional Resources

🌟 Keep Going

You now command every card type most people ever need — that's more than enough to build a serious study habit around almost any subject. Whenever the cloze-number rule slips your mind, this page has it. Onward to writing cards that truly stick.