Flashcard Introduction¶

Flashcards are defined within standard Obsidian markdown files.

A markdown file containing flashcards must identify the deck (or decks) into which the flashcards are placed. However, the file does not need to be tagged as a note for it to have flashcards defined.

Two types of flashcards are supported:

Question & Answer

Question & Answer flashcards are ones where the flashcard text contains both the question text and answer text.

Cloze

Cloze flashcards are ones where the flashcard text identifies parts of the text (e.g. a word or phrase) that is hidden when the front of the card is shown.
The hidden text is known as a cloze deletion.

Tip

For guidelines on how to write and structure flashcards, see Spaced Repetition Guides

Flashcard Text, Flashcards and Cards¶

Note

For simplicity flashcard text is sometimes written just as flashcard

The flashcard text is text that defines the type and content of a card (or a set of related, sibling cards).

Single flashcard, multiple cards¶

For some flashcard types, the flashcard text defines a single card. For other flashcard types, multiple cards are defined.

Flashcard Type	Cards Defined
Single-line Basic	flashcard defines the front and back of a single card.
Single-line Bidirectional	flashcard defines two cards.
Multi-line Basic	flashcard defines the front and back of a single card.
Multi-line Bidirectional	flashcard defines two cards.
Cloze	flashcard defines multiple cards, the number of cards based on the number of cloze deletions.

Sibling Cards¶

If there are multiple cards defined by a single flashcard, those cards are known as sibling cards.

A special scheduling option is available for the review of sibling cards. If the Bury sibling cards until the next day setting is turned on, only one sibling card is available for review on a single day.

Including Blank Lines within Multiline and Cloze Flashcards¶

By default, the end of a multiline flashcard is denoted by a blank line at the end of the flashcard text. This means that blank lines can not be included within the text.

See Cards with Blank Lines if blank lines need to be included.

RTL Support¶

There are two ways that the plugin can be used with RTL languages, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian (Farsi).

If all cards are in a RTL language, then simply enable the global Obsidian option Editor → Right-to-left (RTL).

If all cards within a single note have the same LTR/RTL direction, then frontmatter can be used to specify the text direction. For example:

---
direction: rtl
---

This is the same way text direction is specified to the RTL Support plugin.

Note that there is no current support for cards with different text directions within the same note.

Card Maintenance¶

Deleting cards¶

To delete a card, simply delete the scheduling information & the card text.

Ignoring cards¶

You can wrap flashcards in HTML comments e.g.  --> to prevent it from showing up in your review queues. You can always remove the wrapping comment later.