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Topicality for Dummies: The Basics

Due to the breadth of this year’s resolution, a general understanding of topicality will be useful. At first this might excite affirmative teams, at least until they realize that topicality will become an issue in (hopefully) every round. I’d like to strongly...

Topicality: Effects & Extra

Editors note: Ethos has written on extra topicality more than once; for an alternative view on this theory issue, you can also read this article. Effects topicality and extra topicality tend to bring on quite a bit of confusion within a debate round. Often, teams will...

On Citation Credibility

Everyone gets confused over how to evaluate their citations. Is the source a good one? Is the source biased? Is the author qualified? One way to evaluate a card is field expertise. In other words, is the author an expert in the field being discussed in the card or...

Keep Your Tournament Files

What do I mean by that? I mean that you should keep your flows and keep your ballots. These are the best teaching tools available. Follow these steps to learn from your ballots and flows: 1. Make sure you photocopy your partner’s flow so you have a copy of it....