Editing Flashcard (section)

== Format ==

=== Two-sided cards===
Physical flashcards are two-sided. They have a number of uses and can be simple or elaborate depending on the user's needs and preferences. One may also use two parallel decks in tandem, such as an English-Japanese deck in conjunction with a Japanese-English deck.  

====Example====
An English-speaking student learning the Chinese word [[wikt:人#Mandarin|人]] (rén, person or people) may write a card with the following sides.

Front:
:Q: person
:A: 人, rén
Reverse:
:Q: 人
:A: rén, person

===Three-sided cards===
Electronic flashcards may have a three-sided card.<ref>[http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/help/adding-media.php Adding images, sounds, mathematical formulas, and three-sided cards] on [[Mnemosyne (software)|The Mnemosyne Project]]</ref> Such a card has three fields, Q, A, and A*, where Q & A are reversed on flipping, but A* is always in the answer—the two "sides" are thus Q/A,A* and A/Q,A*. These are most often used for learning foreign vocabulary, where the foreign pronunciation is not transparent from the foreign writing. In this case, the question (Q) is the native word, the answer (A) is the foreign word (written), and the pronunciation is always part of the answer (A*). This is particularly the case for character-based languages like [[Chinese language|Chinese]] [[hanzi]] and [[Japanese language|Japanese]] [[kanji]], but it can also be used for other non-phonetic spellings such as [[English as a second language]].

The purpose of three-sided cards is to provide the benefits of two-sided cards—ease of authoring (enter data once to create two cards), synchronized updates (changes to one are reflected in the other), and spacing between opposite sides (so opposite sides of the same card are not tested too close together)—without the card needing to be symmetric. It is analogous to an arbitrary number of data fields associated with a single record, with each field representing a different aspect of a fact or bundle of facts.