Terms around handwriting and notes

OCR (optical character recognition) is a technique that detects text in an image or scan and converts it into machine-readable characters. Classic OCR is built for printed type and often struggles with handwriting.

Axsuro reads handwritten pages line by line, word for word and with each line's position. Recognising the text is only the first step: Axsuro then works out what each line is, such as a task, an event or a sketch. More in the guide Convert handwriting to text.

Handwriting recognition (handwritten text recognition, HTR) is the set of techniques that detect handwritten text in images and output it as digital text. Unlike classic OCR, it has to cope with joined-up letters, personal writing styles and uneven lines.

Axsuro reads ordinary handwriting in 12 languages, including English and German, even mixed on the same page. If a word is read wrongly, you correct the line with "Fix", and Axsuro learns the correction for the pages that follow. See also OCR.

Converting handwriting to text means turning handwritten notes into editable, searchable digital text, usually by taking a photo or scan and running handwriting recognition on it.

With Axsuro you photograph the page, Axsuro reads every line word for word and turns it into what it is: tasks, events, thoughts, sketches or a typed document. Everything stays findable through search (⌘K) and Ask. Step by step in the guide Convert handwriting to text.

To digitise (US: digitize) is to convert analogue content such as paper notes, drawings or documents into digital form, so it can be stored, searched, shared and edited.

A photo of a page on its own is not yet a useful digital note. Axsuro reads the page, files it in the book by page number and turns markers into tasks, events and documents. Sketches are kept 1:1 and become editable. How this works for a whole notebook: Digitise your notebook.

Scanning is capturing a paper original as a digital image, with a flatbed scanner or, more often today, a phone camera.

In Axsuro, scanning is only the first step. You photograph one or several pages with the camera in the app or the browser, or upload photos (JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC up to 15 MB) and PDFs of up to 50 pages. Axsuro crops the page and then reads it. Photos taken offline are sent later. What happens next is shown on How it works.

Digital handwriting is text written with a pen directly on a screen, such as a tablet or an e-ink device. The strokes are digital from the start, but they still need to be recognised to become searchable text.

Axsuro is made for paper, but it also reads PDFs of up to 50 pages, one page per PDF page. If you export handwritten tablet notes as a PDF, Axsuro reads them like a photographed page. It works the other way round too: Axsuro prints a PDF with room to write, you write on paper, and your notes come back into the PDF as comments. A comparison: Axsuro vs Goodnotes.

A stylus is a pen-shaped input device for touchscreens, used to write and draw on tablets. Active styluses sense pressure and tilt and come fairly close to writing on paper.

Axsuro needs no stylus and no special device: you write with an ordinary pen on paper and photograph the page with your phone. If you write on a tablet with a stylus, you can upload the pages as a PDF. More under digital handwriting.

A smart notebook is a paper notebook designed for digitising, for example with special pages, codes or reusable paper, and usually paired with its own app. A well-known example is Rocketbook.

Axsuro needs no special notebook: it reads ordinary paper, so any notebook, pad or loose sheet. A paper notebook can be connected to Axsuro with the QR code on page i or a code at /connect. A fair comparison: Rocketbook alternative.

In Axsuro, a marker is a short word at the start of a line that says what the line should become, for example todo:, cal:, idea: or doc:.

Case does not matter, and English and German markers (aufgabe:, termin:) can be mixed on the same page. Lines without a marker become thoughts. You can add your own markers in Settings → Markers, including an emoji or a look such as circled or block capitals (Free: 3, from Plus up to 30). All markers at a glance: How markers work.

The task marker todo: (German aufgabe:, or a drawn box ☐) turns a handwritten line into a task in Axsuro.

A date in the line becomes the due date, @Name the person, #Name the project, and ! or !! mark what matters. Words such as "every Friday" make the task repeat. Example: todo: send quote to @Lena by Fri #Fair. The task waits for your "Confirm" and, if connected, also lands in Google Tasks, Microsoft To Do or Todoist. More in the guide Turn handwritten meeting notes into tasks.

The event marker cal: (German termin:) turns a handwritten line into an event in Axsuro's calendar.

Date and time can be written in any order. With no end time an event lasts one hour, with no time it is all day, a place follows the time, and ranges such as "10–12 Oct" become multi-day events. @Name and email addresses become attendees. Example: cal: 14 Nov 10:00 kick-off London office @Jonas. After "Confirm" it also appears in Google Calendar or Outlook if connected. More in From paper to Google Calendar, Outlook and Todoist.

A project tag is a keyword preceded by a hash sign, used to file content under a project or topic.

When you write #Name in a line in Axsuro, that line belongs to the project; the first #Name creates it. The project page then gathers tasks, events, meetings, ideas, thoughts and sketches, with progress, "Decided" and "Still open". Free includes 5 projects, Plus and up unlimited. See also How markers work.

A mention is a name preceded by the @ sign, used to identify or notify a person in a piece of text.

In Axsuro you write @Name on paper: in a task it is the person responsible, in an event an attendee, under a question the person who should answer. Every person gets a page with their tasks, questions, events and meetings. In Business workspaces, @Name assigns the task to that member. More on Meeting notes.

In Axsuro, confirmation means checking what Axsuro recognised on a page before it is saved as a task, event or sketch.

Tasks, events and sketches wait for "Confirm" or "Confirm all"; ideas, questions, thoughts and meetings appear straight away. If a word is wrong, you fix it first. To confirm less, turn on "Always take over" for todo: and cal: in Settings → Markers; everything else waits in one stack across all pages. You stay in control. See How it works.

A sketch is a quick, usually hand-drawn picture, such as a floor plan, a flow of boxes and arrows or a first draft of an idea.

Axsuro finds sketches on your pages and marks them with a dashed frame. With "Keep sketch" it is cut out 1:1, not redrawn, and its strokes become editable. Free keeps 10 sketches, Plus and up unlimited. See it on Digitise sketches.

A sketch editor is a tool for editing drawings online: moving shapes, adding to them, labelling and exporting.

In Axsuro's sketch editor you work on a kept sketch with select, hand, pen, line, arrow, rectangle, ellipse, text, eraser and picture, with colours, grouping and 150 steps of undo. "Side by side" shows the original next to it. You can straighten a selected stroke when you want to: into a clean line, a box, a circle or straight pieces between its corners; otherwise the sketch stays 1:1. Export as PNG, PDF or SVG. From Plus, people with "Can edit" draw together live. More in the guide Digitise and edit hand-drawn sketches online.

Mermaid is a text-based language for diagrams: flowcharts, sequences and similar graphics are written as short text and drawn from it. Many wikis and documentation tools can render Mermaid.

With Pro, Axsuro can turn a kept sketch of boxes and arrows into a clean diagram when you want one: as Mermaid to copy, as SVG or PNG, or opened straight in Mermaid Live. The sketch itself stays as it was, 1:1. More on Digitise sketches.

A way to write formulas as text that Word, Notion and Overleaf turn into typeset maths.

Axsuro also recognises handwritten maths and chemistry as LaTeX and shows it as a clean formula on the web. "Copy LaTeX" takes it to Notion, Overleaf or Obsidian; "Copy for Word" makes it an equation in Word. Axsuro reads what you wrote; it does not solve it. More on study notes.

A document is a continuous piece of typed text, like the ones you know from Google Docs or Word.

Axsuro turns long handwritten text into a document in a normal typeface, word for word and never rewritten: a diary, a story, lecture notes or an essay draft. Use the marker doc: (everything below it to the end of the page) or "Save as document", also for several pages. You edit the text with the original next to it and export it as PDF, Word or Markdown. Free includes 5 documents. More on Digitise your notebook.

Flashcards are study cards with a question or term on the front and the answer on the back. You learn by recalling the answer first and then flipping the card.

Axsuro turns your handwritten notes into flashcards: write a question with q:, question: or ? and the answer right below it with a: or answer:. On study pages Axsuro also finds vocabulary, terms, formulas and dates without markers. Every notebook has its own deck. Flashcards are available from Plus. More on Study notes.

A handwriting font is a computer typeface designed to look handwritten.

In Axsuro's book, your pages are redrawn 1:1 in one of nine handwriting fonts. Axsuro picks the one closest to your own hand, and you can choose another. It is not a font made from your own letters, but the closest of the nine, so the page stays easy to read and still looks like yours. It is included in every plan. More on Digitise your notebook.

Ask is Axsuro's question feature: you ask a question in plain language and get an answer drawn from your own notes.

Ask answers only from what you wrote, in the language of your question and with links to the pages where it says so. It also searches documents, and you can ask right inside the book, for example "What did we decide about the fair?". Free includes 10 questions a month, Plus 100, Pro 500. See Pricing.

Two-way sync means changes travel in both directions: whatever is created, changed or deleted in one system is applied in the other as well.

Axsuro syncs tasks and events both ways with Google Calendar and Google Tasks, the Outlook calendar and Microsoft To Do, and Todoist. From Axsuro to there takes seconds, back takes about 5 minutes. Free connects one account, Plus and up all of them. Business workspaces do not sync. More in the guide From paper to Google Calendar, Outlook and Todoist.

ICS is the file format of the iCalendar standard for calendar data. An .ics file describes an event with its time, place and attendees and can be added to almost any calendar.

Axsuro sends event invitations by email with an .ics file, as well as updates and cancellations. So an event you wrote on paper with cal: and an @Name or email address also reaches the invited person's calendar. See also event marker.

Meeting minutes are the written record of a meeting: who attended, what was discussed and decided, and who does what by when.

In Axsuro you start with meeting: and the attendees as @ names; the lines below are the notes, dec: records decisions and todo: the meeting's tasks. "Send summary" emails the result to everyone who was there, including people without Axsuro. More on Meeting notes.

An action item is a concrete task agreed in a meeting, with a person responsible and usually a deadline.

On paper, you write it in Axsuro as a task under the meeting, for example todo: check budget @Anna by 20 Nov. Axsuro links it to the meeting and shows its status live; in a meeting series, whatever is still open appears under "Open from last time". With wait: you note what you are waiting on from someone. More in the guide Turn handwritten meeting notes into tasks.

The bullet journal is a paper-based planning method developed by Ryder Carroll. Entries are written briefly and marked with symbols, typically a dot for tasks, a circle for events and a dash for notes, alongside an index and monthly and daily logs.

The idea fits Axsuro well: here, too, a sign at the start of a line says what the line is. Instead of a dot and a circle you write todo: and cal:, or you set up your own markers, such as an emoji or a circled word. Axsuro turns them into tasks and events. More on How markers work.

The Cornell method is a note-taking technique developed by Walter Pauk at Cornell University. The page is divided: notes on the right, a narrow cue column for keywords and questions on the left, and a short summary at the bottom. To review, you cover the notes and answer the questions in the cue column.

You can keep taking notes this way with Axsuro. If you write questions with q: and the answer below with a:, Axsuro turns them into flashcards (from Plus), and Ask finds any passage again. More on Study notes.

The Zettelkasten ("slip box") is a knowledge-management method made famous by the sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Each idea goes on its own note, gets an identifier and is linked to other notes, so that over time a web of ideas grows.

Axsuro is not a Zettelkasten app, but it supports working on paper: lines without a marker become thoughts, idea: becomes an idea and #Name files it under a topic. Search (⌘K) and Ask find thoughts again across pages and notebooks. More on Digitise your notebook.

Spaced repetition is a learning method in which material is reviewed at growing intervals: soon after learning, then after days, later after weeks. It relies on the effect that knowledge sticks better when you recall it just before you would forget it.

Axsuro's flashcards work this way: you flip a card and choose "Didn't know", "Almost" or "Knew it". What you know comes back after 1, 3, 7, 16 and 35 days; what you didn't know comes back once more in ten minutes. More in the guide Flashcards from handwritten notes.

The Leitner system is a flashcard learning method described by Sebastian Leitner. Cards move through several boxes: a card you know moves up a box and is reviewed less often, a card you miss goes back to the first box.

Axsuro's flashcards follow the same idea with five steps: what you know comes back after 1, 3, 7, 16 and 35 days; what you didn't know comes back once more in ten minutes. Axsuro keeps the boxes for you, and you only write the question and answer on paper. See also spaced repetition.

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the European Union regulation on the protection of personal data, in force since May 2018. It sets out when data may be processed and gives people rights such as access, correction and erasure.

Axsuro stores your pages in Frankfurt and reads them in the EU. Your notes are never used to train AI models and are encrypted in transit and at rest. You can export everything as one file and delete your account. See also EU hosting.

EU hosting means the servers on which a service stores and processes its data are located in European Union countries and are therefore subject to European data protection law.

With Axsuro, your photos and pages are stored in Frankfurt, and the handwriting is read in the EU too. On top of that come encryption, two-step sign-in and a list of your devices. Teams can find more on Axsuro Business.