Terms You Need to Know

Here you can see that each side of the cube has a different name:
Front (F), Back (B), Right (R), Left (L), Up (U), Down (D).

These sides are named because of their orientation to you, not because of their color. If you turn the cube upside down, the UP becomes DOWN, and the DOWN becomes UP, so the sides don't retain their names. DOWN is whatever side is pointing to your feet, and UP is always pointing up.

There are only 3 types of turns that are useful: clockwise(), counterclockwise('), and half turns(''). The symbols in parenthesis will be what I use to differentiate between different types of turns.

For example:

R would mean to make a CLOCKWISE quarter turn of the RIGHT face:

F' would mean to make a COUNTERCLOCKWISE quarter turn of the FRONT face:

U'' would mean to make a HALF TURN of the upper face:

The color grey in my diagrams will represent sides that you do NOT need to worry about for this step. The color purple will represent the position where the current move will place the current piece. The other colors are just normal.

Onward to Step 1