The Making of Arguments

27. Evidence and Reasoning. We have seen in the last chapter that the chief value of making a brief is that in the first place it lays out your reasoning so that you can scrutin...

When you have to use statistics, simplify them so that your hearers can take them in without effort. Large numbers should be given in round figures, except where some special em...

19. Definition of Terms. Making a proposition definite is chiefly a process of defining terms which are found in it; but when these are defined you may still in your argument us...

49. The Brief and the Argument. If your brief is thoroughly worked out, and based on a careful canvass of the evidence, the work on your argument ought to be at least two thirds...

1. What Argument is. When we argue we write or speak with an active purpose of making other people take our view of a case; that is the only essential difference between argumen...

10. Preparations for the Argument. When you have chosen the subject for your argument there is still much to do before you are ready to write it out. In the first place, you mus...

In the third place, it is desirable that the proposition should be so framed as to throw the burden of proof on the affirmative. Unless the side which opens the debate has somet...

in correction of fallacies as the instructor finds time for. There should be another conference on the brief, and it should be rewritten if necessary. Instructors who have been...

60. The Nature of Debate. The essential difference between debate and written argument lies not so much in the natural difference between all spoken and written discourse as in...

of our consideration; those representing large property interests have a surety of being at least represented. Some such system must be devised if the holding of properly at all...

a. It costs a Nebraska farmer twenty cents to raise a bushel of corn. When corn gets down to twenty cents he cannot buy anything, and he cannot pay more than twelve or fifteen d...

Galveston, or to call it by its broader name, the commission system. It is but another name for despotism. Louis XIV was a commissioner for executing the duties of governing Fra...

g. The use of ardent spirits should be prohibited by law, seeing that it causes misery and crime, which it is one of the chief ends of law to prevent. (From Bode)