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Generator · Print-true

Flash card maker

Type or paste your list, one card per line, and this flashcard maker turns it into a sheet of cards to cut out. Choose fold-over cards, which need no double-sided printer, or true two-sided sheets whose backs line up because the page reverses the columns for you. The cards are built in your browser at true page size, with nothing uploaded and no account.

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Separate front and back with a bar, a colon or a tab.
Details
Sheet— Layout— Cards— Pages— Seed—

How this generator works

There are two ways to get a two-sided card out of a printer that prints on one side. The first is the fold-over layout, the default here, which puts both sides on the same face of the paper. Each card is a tall cell split by a dashed fold line: the prompt sits in the lower half the right way up, and the answer sits in the upper half rotated 180 degrees. Folding the upper half back behind the lower one brings the answer round behind the prompt, both upright. It works on any printer, because both sides print in the same pass and nothing has to meet up afterwards.

The second way is a real duplex print: fronts on one sheet, backs on the next. A printer flipping a page on its long edge mirrors it left to right, so the card in the top-left corner of the front sheet comes back around behind the card in the top-right position. A back sheet laid out in the same order as the front would therefore print the answers onto the wrong cards. This page reverses the column order on each back sheet so the two meet correctly. You cannot see that change on screen or check it before the paper has gone through the printer, so the page works it out from the grid. Both sheets are drawn in real millimeters on the same grid, the fronts headed "fronts" and the backs headed "backs: print on the reverse".

Before a double-sided print, check that your printer driver flips on the long edge, the usual setting for portrait pages on consumer printers. The column reversal assumes it, and a driver set to flip on the short edge brings the backs out rotated, so change that setting in the driver. Set the print dialog to 100% or "Actual size"; "Fit to page" rescales the sheet, and the page cannot change that setting for you. Keep each side short, because a card holding a full sentence ends up in small type. To mix the cards up, tick "Shuffle the order": the seed then fixes the order, so the same seed reprints the same set, and "New order" picks a new seed.

Frequently asked questions

How do the backs line up with the fronts?
The page lays out each back sheet with its columns reversed. When a printer flips the paper on its long edge, the top-left card on the front ends up backed by whatever sits top-right on the back sheet, so the backs have to run right to left to meet their fronts. A back sheet that skips this step puts the answers behind the wrong cards, and nothing on screen shows the mistake before you print.
Do I need a double-sided printer?
No. Leave Sides on Fold-over, the default, and everything prints on one side of the paper. Cut out each card and fold it back along its dashed line: the answer, printed upside down above the line, ends up behind the prompt, and both read the right way up. It takes one sheet and one pass through the printer, so nothing has to line up.
What format does the card list use?
One card per line, as front | back. A colon or a tab also works as the separator, so a paste from a spreadsheet or a notes app usually drops straight in. A line with no separator becomes a card with a blank back, and the note next to the Print button says how many of those it found before you print.
How many cards fit on a page, and what happens to long text?
Four, six, eight or twelve cards a page. The card size follows from the grid, the paper and your margin, so each card is as large as the layout allows. Text is fitted to its card automatically: the font shrinks until the words fit whole on at most four lines. Text that still cannot fit at the smallest size is shortened with an ellipsis, and the page says so.
Is anything uploaded or stored?
No. This page reads your card list, lays it out as vector geometry in your browser, and prints it through your browser's own dialog. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account or watermark, and no settings are saved, so the list is gone when you close the tab.

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