Printable flashcards

The deck on this page

The bench above is set to times tables, 1 to 12, 8 to a sheet. That is every product from 1 x 1 to 12 x 12, so 144 cards. Eight to a sheet in a 2 by 4 grid is 18 sheets, and the file has 36 pages because each sheet is printed twice: once for the fronts and once for the backs. A card comes out 95 by 69.3 mm on A4 and the type is set at 64 pt.

The problem this press exists to solve

Printing the fronts is easy. Printing the backs so that each answer lands on the back of its own question is not, and it is where home-made flashcards go wrong. Put the paper back in the tray, print the answers in the same order, and every answer is on the wrong card: the sheet has been turned over, so the first column is now the last.

The fix is to print the backs in a reversed order, and which order depends on which edge your printer turns the sheet about. Turn it about the long edge, the way a book opens, and the columns reverse while the rows stay put. Turn it about the short edge, the way a notepad opens, and the rows reverse while the columns stay put. Both are on the bench as a control, because there is no way for a web page to know which one your printer does.

If you set it wrong you will find out on the first sheet, and the fix is to set it the other way. That is the whole of it.

Fourteen decks

Times tables, addition, subtraction, division, the alphabet, numbers, sight words, shapes, colours, music notes, Spanish words, the fifty states, blank cards, and a box you can paste your own pairs into. Every one of them is drawn by the same press, so a card is the same object whichever deck it came from.

How the cards are sized

You choose how many go on a sheet: 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10. The card is then as large as that grid allows, and the type is as large as the longest thing in the deck allows. The two sides are sized separately, which matters more than it sounds: the states deck has Massachusetts on the front and Boston on the back, and sizing both to the longer of them would set every capital in the pack smaller than it needs to be.

If a deck will not set at 9 pt at the size you asked for, the press says so and stops rather than printing something nobody can read across a table.

The file

52,343 bytes over 36 pages. Everything prints in black except the colour deck, which cannot. Cut marks are lines by default and can be set to corner marks or switched off.