Flashcards work because they force production. You have to supply the answer before seeing it, and that effort is what makes the memory stick — which is precisely the skill a written semester paper or an entrance MCQ tests under time pressure.
Paste your notes with a separator between each term and its definition and the deck builds itself. Cards contain only what you typed, so the deck matches your syllabus exactly rather than an approximation of it.
Reading a chapter again produces a strong sense of familiarity that is easily mistaken for knowledge. Retrieving something without the page in front of you is harder, feels considerably worse, and works far better — an effect reliable enough in the research to have its own name, the testing effect.
So attempt the answer before flipping, even when unsure. A failed attempt followed by seeing the answer teaches more than reading the answer directly, which is counterintuitive enough that most students never try it.
Three separators work: a colon, a spaced dash, or a tab. The tab option means two columns copied straight out of a spreadsheet paste in without reformatting, which is how many students already keep definition lists.
Lines without a separator are skipped and counted, so you can spot one that did not parse. Leading bullets, dashes and numbering are stripped automatically, so a bulleted list usually works as it is.
One fact per card. A card whose back holds four points can never be marked right or wrong, so you will keep judging it "nearly" and never actually learn it. Split it into four.
Write the definition in your own words rather than copying the textbook. The rephrasing is most of the learning, and a card you understood while making is far easier to recall later than one you transcribed.
Running a deck once the night before is cramming, which is how most semester revision actually happens. The same total time spread across several days retains substantially more, because each retrieval after partial forgetting strengthens the memory more than an easy one does.
Shuffle between passes. A deck reviewed in a fixed order teaches you the sequence — you begin recalling what comes next rather than what the card asks — and that collapses the moment the exam presents the same material in a different order.
One card per line, with a colon, spaced dash or tab between term and definition. Tab-separated means you can paste two columns from a spreadsheet.
Yes, in this browser's local storage. They survive closing the tab but do not sync between devices, and clearing browser data removes them.
No. It builds cards from the term and definition pairs you supply. Inventing content for revision material risks teaching you something outside your syllabus.
Twenty to forty is manageable. Very large decks leave long gaps between repetitions of any single card, which weakens the benefit.
Yes — once loaded it runs entirely in your browser.