How to Make Cloze Cards in Anki (Easy)

Cloze cards in Anki are one of the most convenient types of cards. These can be made quickly and significantly improved through the use of a couple of add-ons.

This article is all about how to get make cloze cards in Anki and get the most out of them.

Lets get started.

Table of Contents

What’s a Cloze Card in Anki?

Cloze cards allow you to hide parts of the text on the front of a card. The answer is obscured by a […] sign that then disappears when you complete the card, revealing the answer. You can see this in the image below.

All you have to do is hit the Spacebar and the answer is revealed.

Cloze cards are especially handy if you want to make Anki cards faster. I wrote an article on my process of using cloze cards (and special add-ons) to make Anki cards faster if you are interested.

How do You Create a Cloze Card in Anki?

Here I will outline how to create a cloze card step by step.

Click add at the top of your Anki window to open the card editor.
Click type in the top left of the card editor and select “cloze”.
Type your question into the text field of the card editor.
Select the part you want to be your answer and press Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + C to hide part of the text.
Click add at the bottom of the card editor.
Done.

You can also select multiple pieces of text to hide. These will be labelled as {{c1::answer}}, {{c2::answer}}, {{c3::answer}} etc.

Each cloze deletion is its own card. If you have three cloze deletions (like the example above) it means you will have 3 cards show up with one of the three parts of the text hidden.

If you want all of them at once you can just edit them to be all {{c1::answer}}.

How do you additional hints to cloze cards?

Did you know you can also add hints to the answer to a cloze card? You can see what this looks like below.

How to add a hint to a cloze card step by step:

Open the card editor.
Find the answer to the cloze card. This should look like this: {{c1::Answer::hint}}.
Add “::” to the end of the answer. This gives you: {{c1::Answer::hint}.
Done.

How to Make Anki Cloze Cards Better

Enhanced Cloze cards add-on

If you feel like the default cloze card could be better in Anki then you are not alone.

You can install the Enhanced Cloze add-on if you want some enhancement to your cloze cards. This addon allows you to click through multiple clozes one at a time rather than either revealing them all at once or having them show up in separate cards one at a time.

I also have a quick guide on how to install Anki add-ons, if you don’t know how to do this.

You can also add additional information like mnemonics that get revealed when you show the answer.

Always on top add-on

If you are finding that copy and pasting text to be used for the creation of cloze cards is annoying because you always have to be alt-tabbing between the Anki window and what you are reading then look no further. The Always on Top add-on makes creating cloze cards via copy and paste very quick and easy.

The Takeaway

Creating Cloze cards in Anki is a simple and easy way to remember new information quickly. This is done by occluding parts of the text and revealing these occlusions as the answer. Finally, there are some good add-ons to make the experience of using these cards even better.

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Sean

Hello, my name is Sean and I am currently a Cognitive Science student at a Canadian University. My passion for learning has led me to research the ways in which we can optimize our learning as students. I believe that learning should be an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. I am constantly seeking out new ways to make the most out of my learning at university and I write about those things here.