Writing good cards

Andys working notes suggest that good SRS prompts have the following qualities:

• access an idea from multiple angles
• capture one precise think (likely reflective of “Chunks” in human cognition)
• avoid unintentional ambiguity
• are concise
• get to what really matters about the topic, not just what’s easy to memorize

Even more detail from his page on What makes good SRS prompts:

• Spaced repetition memory prompts should be concise
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should usually focus on one idea
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should encode ideas from multiple angles
  • Spaced repetition memory prompts should connect and relate ideas
• Avoid orphan spaced repetition memory prompts
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should ensure reviewers must retrieve answers from memory
  • Avoid yes-no spaced repetition memory prompts
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should be written to discourage shallow “pattern matching”

Sources

• Augmenting long-term memory
• Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics