Cheat Sheets: Definition, Academic Use, and Technical Reference

What is a Cheat Sheet? Definition and Terminology

A cheat sheet or crib sheet is a concise set of notes used for quick reference. The term may also be rendered as cheatsheet.

Academic Use and Exam Preparation

Cheat sheets are so named because they may be used by students without the instructor's knowledge to cheat on a test. However, in many educational settings, particularly high school or undergraduate studies, rote memorization is often less important than basic education or intense graduate studies. Therefore, students may be permitted to consult their own notes during the exam, which is not considered cheating.

The act of preparing a so-called cheat sheet is also an educational exercise. For this reason, students are typically only allowed to use cheat sheets they have written themselves. In such usage, a cheat sheet is a physical piece of paper, often filled with equations and/or facts in compressed writing. Modern students often print cheat sheets in extremely small font, fitting an entire page of notes in the palm of their hands during the exam.

Cheat Sheets for University Staff and Marking

The term can also apply to the fully worked solution for exams or work sheets normally handed out to university staff to ease marking.

Cheat Sheets as Reference Cards

In more general usage, a "cheat sheet" is any short (one or two page) reference to terms, commands, or symbols. The user is expected to understand the use of such terms, etc., but not necessarily to have memorized all of them.

Many computer applications, for example, have cheat sheets included in their documentation which list keystrokes or menu commands needed to achieve specific tasks. This saves the user the effort of digging through an entire manual to find the keystroke needed to, for example, move between two windows. An example of such a cheat sheet is one for the Gimp photo editing software.^[1]

Technical Documentation and Web-Based References

Some academic and technical publishers also publish cheat sheets for software packages and technical topics. In some cases, these are also intended as display items in that they are colourful and visually appealing.

Web-based cheat sheets, serving as a reference to terms, commands, or symbols, have become extremely common.

Digital Cheat Sheets in Modern Examinations

In modern open-book, internet-based examinations, the digital "cheat sheet" (loaded onto a USB stick, for example) may be regarded as an essential component. Specifically, from the examiner's point of view, what the student loads is a strong indication of what the student knows. It is easier to click-direct from the stick rather than typing out information during the test.