Argument & Persuasion: Claims, Evidence, Fallacies & the Three Appeals

For beginners · ages 5–8

A claim with a reason

A claim says what someone thinks or wants. A reason tells you why. A claim with a reason is an argument.

Look at the last row. The reason came first, and the word so pointed on to the claim. Because points to a reason. So points to a claim. And look at the red team row: big letters made it loud, but they did not add a reason.

Every argument in this chapter gets four questions - What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit? What could the other side say? - and this section starts you on the first two.

A claim and its reason can come in different orders, and with different pointing words. Here is one claim and one reason, four ways.

Notice three things. First, the claim and the reason stayed the same in every row. Only the order and the pointing word changed. So do not look for a claim only at the start, or a reason only at the end.

Second, an argument can have no pointing word at all. Two sentences sit side by side, and the second one tells why. Ask of each part: does this tell me what someone wants, or why they want it?

Third, the word because does not make an argument all by itself. "We should play tag, because we should play tag." The part after because only says the claim again. No new why has joined it. In the next section you will meet more claims that wear a because, or shout, but still have no reason.

Picture a small table. The tabletop is the claim: the thing you want people to see and agree with. A reason is a leg under the table. A tabletop with no legs lies flat on the floor, and nobody can put anything on it. Add a leg, and it can stand up off the floor. Later in this chapter you will add more legs, and test how strong each leg is. But every argument starts the same way: a top, and at least one leg holding it up.

This section gives you the two parts of every argument: a claim and a reason. Section 2 shows that saying a claim again, or louder, is not a reason. Section 3 tells a fact from an opinion. Sections 4 to 9 add agreeing with a reason, strong and weak reasons, persuading a friend, the other side, adverts, and claims that are only said loudly. Section 10 mixes them all. In Practice, one claim will carry two or three reasons, and in Craft you will build claims worth arguing.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Some sentences have the word because, but nobody is trying to make you think or do anything. "The grass is wet because it rained last night." You can already see that the grass is wet. The sentence does not ask you to believe it, or to do something. It only tells how it happened. That is telling, not arguing. Now compare: "We should wear boots, because the grass is wet." This one wants you to do something: wear boots. You could say yes, or you could say no. So it is an argument. The wet grass is its reason. Here is a test for it. Ask: is someone trying to make me think something, or do something? If yes, find the claim and the reason. If the sentence only tells how something happened, it is telling, not arguing. And here is a second hard one. A claim and its reason can sit in two sentences, with no pointing word. "We should feed the fish now. Its bowl has no food left in it." There is no because and no so. But the second sentence tells why. So it is an argument. When you are not sure, ask two questions. What does this person want me to think or do? What tells me why?

Did you know the word argument once meant making something clear? It comes from an old Latin word, arguere, which means "to make clear" or "to show". So an argument, at its heart, is not a fight. It is a way of making clear why you think something. And here is a second surprise. Long ago in India, thinkers who studied a way of reasoning called Nyaya gave the reason its own name: hetu. Their most famous example went like this: "The hill has fire, because it has smoke." Nobody down below could see the fire. The smoke they could see was the reason to believe the fire was there. The same shape works today. "Someone is baking, because the hall smells of fresh bread." You cannot see the baker. But the smell is a reason to believe it. A claim, and a reason that tells why: the oldest shape of an argument, and still the first one you need.

An argument is not always a good argument. "We should play outside, because the sky is blue" has a claim and a reason, but the reason does not tell us much about playing outside. Section 5 compares strong and weak reasons. An argument does not have to use the word because. Look for any part that tells why, before or after the claim. A claim on its own is not wrong or bad. "I love this song" is a fine thing to say. It just is not an argument yet. You can disagree with an argument and still see that it is one. Finding the claim and the reason comes first. Agreeing or disagreeing comes later, in section 4.

1. Read the whole thing slowly before you decide.
2. Find the part that says what someone thinks or wants. That is the claim.
3. Look for because. It usually points to the reason.
4. Look for so and that is why. They usually point to the claim.
5. If there is no pointing word, ask which part tells why.
6. Do not call a claim an argument just because it is loud or sure.
7. Do not call a claim an argument just because it is long.
8. Check that the part after because is new, not the claim said again.
9. Decide that it is an argument before you decide whether you agree.
10. When you want something, say your claim, then because, then your reason.

• Aarav says: "Our class should start a reading club, because many of us love the same stories."
• Meera says: "The swings are the best thing in the whole park!"
• Kavya says: "The plants on the windowsill look dry, so we should water them."
• Tom says: "Sports day should be in the morning, because the afternoons get very hot."
• Emily says: "Hamsters are the cutest pets in the world."
• Kofi says: "We should keep the music room open after school. Lots of us want to practise."

• Rohan says: "The class trip should go to the farm, because we could see the animals up close."
• Ishaan calls out: "Cricket is the best game EVER!"
• Priya says: "It is raining hard, so we should play board games inside."
• Oliver says: "I think the canteen should sell more fruit."
• Hannah says: "The bench at the bus stop should be fixed, because people have nowhere to sit while they wait."
• Yuki says: "The path is icy this morning. That is why we should walk slowly."

Giving a reason, not just saying it louder

Saying a claim again, louder, or with more words, does not make it stronger. Only a reason, a why, makes a claim stronger.

Look at the two because rows. The word because is there, but nothing new comes after it. A real reason tells you something you did not know from the claim alone.

When you meet any argument, ask four questions - What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit? What could the other side say? - and this section sharpens the second one: is that really a reason, or the claim said louder?

You can turn a louder claim into an argument with one small question: why? Here are four louder claims, the question, and what they became.

Notice three things. First, the claim stayed the same in every row. Nothing was taken away. Only a why was added.

Second, asking why is the tool. When you hear yourself saying something again, stop and ask yourself why you want it. Then say that instead, once.

Third, the claims with a reason are calmer, and they give the listener something to answer. They can agree, or they can give a reason of their own. A shout gives them only a shout to answer. In section 7 you will see that someone could reasonably think the other way, and a reason is what lets the two of you talk about it.

Picture the table from section 1: the claim is the tabletop, and each reason is a leg. Now imagine shouting at a tabletop that lies on the floor. It does not stand up. Paint it brighter, write BIG letters on it, put it down three times: it is still on the floor. Only a leg lifts it. Saying a claim louder is shouting at the tabletop. Giving a reason is adding a leg.

In section 1 you found the two parts of an argument: a claim and a reason. This section shows what is not a reason: saying it again, saying it louder, and a because that brings nothing new. Section 3 tells facts from opinions. Section 5 compares a strong reason with a weak one, and section 9 asks whether a claim said loudly or often is true. In Practice, you will meet repetition again in adverts, and see how it is used to persuade.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes the part after because uses new words, but it still says the claim again. "This book is the best, because it is better than all the other books." The words are new. But best already means better than all the others. So no new why has joined. It is the claim in a new coat. Now compare: "This book is the best, because it has funny pictures and a twisty ending." Funny pictures and a twisty ending are new. They tell you something you did not know from "best" alone. That is a reason. Here is a test for it. Cover the claim with your hand. Read only the part after because. Does it tell you something new about the book? If it only says "best" again in other words, it is not a reason yet. And here is a second hard one. A loud saying can still have a real reason. "Come quickly! The puppy has got out of the gate!" It is loud, and it is said fast. But the puppy getting out is a real why. The loudness does not make the reason better, and it does not make it worse. The reason is what you judge.

Did you know that the word claim comes from an old Latin word, clamare, which means "to shout" or "to cry out"? The word clamour, a loud noise of many voices, comes from it too. So long ago, a claim was something you called out. Today we know better: calling a claim out loudly does not make it stronger. Only a reason does. And here is a second surprise. The word because was once two words: by cause. It meant "for this cause", or "for this reason". So every time you say because, you are making a little promise: a cause, a why, is coming next. That is why "because it just is" feels empty. The promise was made, and then nothing came. When you say because, keep the promise: say the why.

Loud is not always wrong. Someone may shout because something is urgent, and still give a real reason: "Watch out! The step is broken!" Judge the reason, not the volume. Saying something twice can help people hear it in a noisy room. It just does not make the claim any stronger. Please is good manners, and you should keep saying it. It is not a reason, but it goes well with one. A reason can still be a weak one. Section 5 compares strong and weak reasons. And choosing calm words or loud words is about tone, which chapter 22 covers; here you ask only whether a reason is there.

1. Read or listen to the whole thing before you judge it.
2. Take away the big letters, the ! marks and the repeats in your head.
3. Say what is left in a quiet voice, once.
4. Ask: is there a why? Put your finger on it if you can.
5. When you see because, read only what comes after it.
6. Check that the part after because is new, not the claim again in other words.
7. Treat "because it just is" as no reason at all.
8. Keep a real reason even when it is shouted, like "STOP! The pan is hot!"
9. When you catch yourself repeating a claim, stop and ask yourself why you want it.
10. Say your claim once, with your reason, in a calm voice, and keep saying please too.

• Rohan says: "We want the swings! We want the swings! WE WANT THE SWINGS!"
• Priya says: "Can we have the swings next? The little ones have had them all morning."
• Farhan says: "This is the best kite, because it is the best kite."
• Grace says: "Please, please, please can we stay up late?"
• Oliver says: "STOP! The pan is hot!"
• Amara says: "We should read the dragon book, because it has big pictures and short pages for new readers."

• Kavya says: "Mango is the best fruit, because it just is."
• Arjun says: "I REALLY, REALLY want the red bike!"
• Nandini says: "Can I ride the red bike today? Mine has a flat tyre."
• Hannah says: "Tidy up! Tidy up! Tidy up!"
• Jack says: "Please tidy up now, because the next class needs the room."
• Mateo says: "The green team is the best, because it is better than every other team."

Fact or opinion?

A fact is a sentence you can check. An opinion is a sentence that tells what someone thinks or feels. People can hold different opinions about the same thing, and that is fine.

An opinion is not a wrong sentence. It is a different kind of sentence, and everyone is allowed to have one. Sorting a sentence as an opinion only tells you that you cannot check it.

The Argument Check asks four questions: What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit? What could the other side say? This section helps with the second one: when you find the reason, ask whether you can check it.

Some sentences carry a fact and an opinion together. The fact part rides in front, and the opinion part comes along behind it.

Notice three things. First, little joining words such as and or so often sit between the two parts. When you see one, check each side on its own.

Second, the fact part usually comes first. Because you can check it, the whole sentence can feel checked. It is not. You can measure the slide, but no tape measure will tell you which slide is the most fun.

Third, look at the canteen sentence. The fact part, idli on Mondays, is a reason. The opinion part, Monday is the best day, is a claim. That is what an argument looks like: a claim with a reason. Here the reason is one you can check, so anyone who doubts it can look at the canteen menu. Whether idli makes Monday the best day is still the speaker's opinion.

Picture two boxes on a table. One box has a magnifying glass on its lid: the checking box. Facts go in there, because you can look, count or measure to find out if they are right. The other box has a speech bubble on its lid: the thinking box. Opinions go in there, because they tell what someone thinks or feels. Before you drop a sentence in, hold the magnifying glass over it. If the glass finds something to check, it goes in the checking box. If all it finds is a feeling, it goes in the thinking box.

In sections 1 and 2 you learned that an argument is a claim with a reason, and that a reason, not a louder voice, makes a claim stronger. This section asks what kind of reason you have: one you can check, or one that is only what someone thinks. In section 4 you will agree and disagree with a reason. In section 5 you will compare a strong reason with a weak one, and a reason you can check is often the one that holds up. In section 9 you will see that a sentence said loudly or often is not a fact for that. In Practice you will ask a harder question: does this fact really support this claim?

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. A fact is a sentence you can check. But what if you check it and it turns out wrong? Tom says, "The bus comes at nine o'clock." You can check that. You look at the timetable at the bus stop. It says ten o'clock. So Tom's sentence was wrong. But it was still the checking kind of sentence. That is exactly why you could find out it was wrong. A checkable sentence that turns out wrong is a mistake about a fact. It does not become an opinion. So when you sort sentences, the first question is not "Is it true?" It is "Could I check it?" Then, if it matters, you go and check. An opinion is different. "Waiting for the bus is boring" cannot be checked at all. There is no timetable for boring. And here is a second hard one. Some opinions sound like facts because nearly everyone shares them. "A birthday party is a nice treat." Lots of people think so. But nice is still a feeling, and someone could honestly feel differently, perhaps someone who does not like noisy rooms. Many people agreeing does not turn an opinion into a fact. When you are unsure, ask the checking question out loud: how would I check this? If you can name a way, it is a fact sentence. If you cannot, it is an opinion.

Did you know that the word fact once meant a deed - something a person had done? It comes from the Latin word factum, "a thing done", from facere, "to do" or "to make". Long ago in English, a fact was an action. You can still hear that old meaning in a phrase grown-ups use: someone who helps after a deed is done is said to help "after the fact". The word factory, a place where things are made, comes from the same old Latin family. Later, fact came to mean something that really happened, and then something that can be shown to be true. A deed is a good picture for it: something that happened is something you can check. The word opinion comes from the Latin opinio, from opinari, "to think" or "to suppose". So an opinion has always been about thinking. Even the two old words agree with this section: a fact is about what was done or what is, and an opinion is about what someone thinks.

A fact sentence is one you can check. It can still turn out to be wrong when you check it. Then it is a mistake about a fact, not an opinion. An opinion is not a bad or wrong sentence. Everyone has opinions, and you are allowed yours. Sorting a sentence as an opinion is not saying the person is wrong. Some sentences hold a fact and an opinion together. Look for the opinion word, such as best, nicest, boring or should, and split the sentence into its two parts. In this band you sort short, everyday sentences. Practice will ask a harder question: can this fact really support this claim?

1. Read the whole sentence once, slowly, before you decide anything.
2. Ask the checking question: how could I check this?
3. Name a way to check it: look, count, measure, or ask someone who knows.
4. If you can name a way, call it a fact, even before you have checked it.
5. If the answer depends on who you ask, call it an opinion.
6. Watch for opinion words: best, worst, nicest, boring, yummy, should.
7. Do not decide by how sure or how loud the speaker sounds.
8. Do not decide by whether you agree with the sentence.
9. Split a long sentence at and or so, and check each part on its own.
10. Treat other people's opinions kindly; they are allowed to think differently from you.

• Aarav says: The library opens at nine o'clock.
• Meera says: Mango is the best fruit in the world.
• Kavya says: Our class has a pet fish, and it is the prettiest fish in the school.
• Tom says: Sports day should be every week.
• Emily says: The swings are next to the slide.
• Kofi says: My dog has three white paws, and dogs are the best pets.

• Priya says: Homework should be shorter, because we have football practice after school.
• Ishaan says: Ten minutes of reading is too much.
• Farhan says: The canteen sells idli on Mondays.
• Grace says: Our football team won three matches this term.
• Oliver says: The new robot kit is the most exciting thing in the classroom.
• Yuki says: A spider has eight legs, and spiders are scary.

Agreeing and disagreeing, with a reason

When someone makes a claim, you can agree or disagree. Either way, give a reason. Keep the reason about the idea, and keep your words kind about the person.

Look at the answer about always being wrong. It has the word because, but its reason is about the person, not the plan. Being unkind about someone never tells you whether their idea is good.

The Argument Check asks four questions: What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit? What could the other side say? When you answer a friend with a reason, you are doing the fourth one out loud, fairly.

There are four ways to answer a claim, and each one has a kind way to start.

Notice three things. First, every starter leads to a reason. The kind words open the door, and the because walks through it.

Second, the words point at the idea: the book, the hall, the park, the swings. None of them says "you are". That is what keeps a disagreement kind.

Third, look at the changed-my-mind row. Changing your mind after a good reason is not losing. It is what a good listener does. In section 7 you will look for the other side before anyone even says it.

How polite words sound, and when to use them, is a question for the chapter on tone, ch22. This section asks something else: does your answer give a reason?

Picture a game of catch. A friend throws you a claim. You catch it, look at it, and throw back your answer with a reason tied to it like a ribbon. You throw gently, to your friend's hands. "No!" is a ball thrown back with no ribbon: your friend catches it but learns nothing. An unkind word is a ball thrown too hard: it hurts, and the game stops. A ribboned ball, thrown gently, keeps the game going.

In sections 1 and 2 you learned that a claim needs a reason, and that a louder voice is not a reason. In section 3 you learned to ask whether a reason can be checked. This section turns all of that around: now you answer someone else's claim, with a reason of your own. In section 5 you will compare a strong reason with a weak one, and in section 7 you will look for the other side. In Practice you will name the other side's point and answer it directly, and you will learn the name for the move of being unkind about the person instead of answering the idea.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes you agree with part of a claim and not the rest. Jack says, "Let's have the class picnic on Friday at the big park." Hannah likes the idea of a picnic, and Friday is free. But the big park is a long walk, and the little ones get tired. So Hannah does not have to say yes to all of it, or no to all of it. Hannah can say: "I agree about Friday, but not the big park, because it is a long walk for the little ones. The small park has a shady tree." That answer splits the claim into two parts, agrees with one part, and gives a reason for not agreeing with the other. It even offers a new idea. And here is a second hard one. Sometimes both people have a good reason. Grace wants to paint the class poster red, because red is easy to see from far away. Kofi wants blue, because blue matches the class flag. Both reasons fit. Nobody is being silly. When that happens, a fair answer can be: "Your reason is good too. Shall we ask the class?" Disagreeing does not always end with one winner. Sometimes it ends with a better choice.

Did you know that the word polite once meant polished? It comes from the Latin word politus, "polished", from polire, "to polish". A polite answer is a polished one: smooth, with no sharp edges that scratch. It can still say no. The word agree has a pleasant story too. It comes from an old French phrase, a gre, meaning "to one's liking", and that goes back to the Latin gratum, "pleasing". To agree once meant to be pleased with something. And the word argument comes from the Latin arguere, "to make clear". So an argument was never meant to be a shouting match. It was a way of making something clear. Put the three together, and you get this section: a polite disagreement is a polished way of making something clear, even when you are not pleased with the idea.

Disagreeing is not rude. A kind no, with a reason, is often the most helpful answer you can give. Agreeing is not weak. A yes with a reason helps the group decide, just as a no with a reason does. A because is not always a reason about the idea. Check that your because talks about the plan, the time or the place, not about the person. You do not have to win. If someone gives you a better reason, changing your mind is a good answer. And if both reasons are good, you can look for a choice that works for both.

1. Listen to the whole claim before you answer.
2. Decide for yourself: agree, disagree, or agree with only part.
3. Find your because before you start to speak.
4. Check that your reason is about the idea, not the person.
5. Start kindly: "I agree, because..." or "I see what you mean, but...".
6. Use a calm voice; a louder no is not a stronger no.
7. Say "I don't think so" rather than "You're wrong".
8. When you agree with part, say which part, and give a reason for the rest.
9. Listen to the reason that comes back, and think about it.
10. Change your mind, and say so, when someone gives you a better reason.

• Rohan says, "Let's play cricket in the hall." Meera answers: "I don't think so, because the ball could break a window."
• Priya says, "Our class should get a goldfish." Ishaan answers: "No way!"
• Kavya says, "Let's go to the library at break." Aarav answers: "I agree, because the library got new comics this week."
• Grace says, "Let's paint the fence blue." Tom answers: "That's a silly idea, Grace."
• Oliver says, "We should start a chess club." Emily answers: "I agree, because lots of us play chess at break."
• Mateo says, "The bake sale should be on Friday." Lucia answers: "I see why, but I don't think so, because the hall is busy on Friday."

• Nandini says, "We should have story time outside." Farhan answers: "I don't think so, because you never have good ideas."
• Zoya says, "Let's read the space book at story time." Kavya answers: "I agree, because Zoya is my best friend."
• Dev says, "Let's fly kites today." Tenzin answers: "I don't think so, because there is no wind." Dev points at the flag. Tenzin says: "Oh, I didn't see that. Now I agree, because the flag shows it is windy."
• Jack says, "Let's have the picnic on Friday at the big park." Hannah answers: "I agree about Friday, but not the big park, because it is a long walk for the little ones."
• Ruby says, "Recess should be longer." Ben answers: "Me too!"
• Amara says, "We should plant sunflowers in the garden." Kofi answers: "I agree, because sunflowers grow fast, so we can watch them change every week."

A strong reason or a weak one

Two reasons can back the same claim, and one can be much stronger than the other. A strong reason passes three tests. It fits: it is about the thing the claim is about. It is true: you could check it. And it matters: it would really help someone decide.

A strong reason is not the longest one or the loudest one. It is the one that passes all three tests. This is the heart of the four questions you will use all through this chapter: What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit? What could the other side say?

Weak reasons come in a few shapes. Here is one claim with five weak reasons and one strong one.

Notice three things.

First, each weak reason fails a different test. Some are about something else. Some are not true. One is only the claim said again, more loudly. So when you call a reason weak, say which test it fails.

Second, a true reason can still be weak. Your cousin may really have a red bike. But a true reason that does not fit the claim does not help it. True is one test, not all three.

Third, the strong reason is the longest here, and that is not why it is strong. In the overview, the long reason about the watering can was weak. Length is never the test. A short reason - "because its soil is dry" - can carry a claim on its own.

Picture a balance scale, the kind with two pans. Put one reason in each pan. A strong reason is like a heavy stone: it fits, it is true, it matters, and its pan goes down. A weak reason is like a big, fluffy feather: it may look large, but it hardly weighs anything. Shouting a reason does not add weight. Making it longer does not add weight. Only a reason that passes the three tests makes the pan sink.

Sections 1 to 4 showed you a claim with a reason, a reason that is more than a louder claim, a fact and an opinion, and how to agree or disagree with a because. This section adds weight: two reasons for one claim, and which one is stronger. Next, in Persuading a friend, you will choose the reason that is strongest for the person you are talking to. In Practice, Strong and weak evidence grows this into evidence: a count of many people against one friend's story. In Craft, the question "Does the reason fit?" gets a section of its own.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Is "because I like it" a strong reason or a weak one? Look at two claims. Priya says: "I will pick the mango lolly for my snack, because mango is my favourite." This choice is only for Priya. Her liking fits the claim, it is true (she knows what she likes), and it matters, because she is the one who will eat it. For this claim, it is a strong reason. Now Rohan says: "Every child in our class should get a mango lolly, because mango is my favourite." It is the same kind of reason. But now the claim is about the whole class. Rohan's liking is true, yet it tells us nothing about what the other children like. For this claim, it is weak. A stronger reason would be: "because when we asked, most of the class chose mango." So the same reason can be strong for one claim and weak for another. You cannot weigh a reason all by itself. Always say the claim first, then ask whether the reason fits that claim. And here is a second hard one. Sometimes both reasons are strong. "We should walk to the park, because it is only two streets away." "We should walk to the park, because the bus is not running today." Both fit, both can be checked, both matter. Then you can pick the one that matters more - here, the bus not running settles it - or keep both. Two strong reasons together are better than one, and you will build claims with two or three reasons in Practice.

Did you know that the word reason comes from counting? It came into English through old French, from the Latin word ratio, which meant reckoning or counting up. The same Latin word gives us ratio in maths. So a reason was first something you could count on and add up. Here is another one. When you think hard about which of two reasons is stronger, you ponder. Ponder comes from a Latin word, ponderare, which means to weigh. Ponderous, a word for something very heavy and slow, comes from the same family. And the word argument comes from the Latin arguere, which meant to make clear. A strong reason does exactly that: it makes clear why the claim should be believed. So long before anyone drew a scale to show strong and weak reasons, the words already said it. Thinking about reasons is weighing them, and the heavier reason is the one that makes things clear.

A weak reason does not make the claim wrong. The claim may still be right. It just needs a better reason. A true reason can still be weak, if it does not fit the claim or does not matter for this choice. "I like it" is a fine reason for a choice that is only yours, and a weak one for a choice that is for everyone. Sometimes both reasons are strong. Then pick the one that matters more, or keep both. In Discover you weigh reasons by fit, truth and how much they matter. In Practice you will weigh evidence too: a count of many people, someone who really knows, or one person's story.

1. Say the claim first, so you know what the reasons are for.
2. Read each reason by itself, slowly.
3. Ask: does it fit the claim? A green watering can does not fit a thirsty plant.
4. Ask: is it true, and could we check it? You can touch the soil to see if it is dry.
5. Ask: does it matter for this choice?
6. Do not pick a reason because it is longer. Short reasons can be strong.
7. Do not pick a reason because it is louder or said again and again.
8. Do not pick a reason just because everyone says it. Ask whether anyone has checked.
9. When a reason is weak, say which test it fails: fit, true or matters.
10. Ask who the claim is for. "I like it" works for your own choice, not for the whole class.
11. If a claim has only a weak reason, look for a stronger one before you decide the claim is wrong.

• Aarav says: We should water the class plant, because its soil is dry and its leaves are drooping.
• Meera says: We should water the class plant, because the watering can is green.
• Kavya says: Our class should read the dinosaur book next, because most of us chose it when the teacher asked.
• Tom says: We should play football at break, because football is the best, the best, the very best game!
• Emily says: Our class should walk to the park, because the park is only two streets away.
• Kofi says: We should take umbrellas on the trip, because everyone in my street says so.

• Priya says: I will pick the mango lolly for my snack, because mango is my favourite.
• Rohan says: Every child in our class should get a mango lolly, because mango is my favourite.
• Ishaan says: We should close the window, because windows are made of glass.
• Grace says: Our team should practise on Friday, because the match is on Saturday.
• Oliver says: Green team will win the relay, because green is the nicest colour.
• Yuki says: The reading club should meet on Tuesday, because the library is closed on Wednesday.

Persuading a friend

To persuade a friend is to give them a reason to choose what you are asking for. The fair way has three parts: say what you want, give a true reason that matters to them, and listen to their answer.

Persuading is giving a reason. Pushing is trying to win without one. When you persuade, you are asking the four questions of your own argument before your friend does: What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit - here, does it fit your friend? What could the other side say?

A good ask has four steps. Here is Ishaan asking Zara to come to the swimming club. Zara loves racing.

Notice three things.

First, Ishaan asks a question, not an order. "Would you like to...?" leaves room for a yes or a no. "You have to come!" does not.

Second, Zara's worry is a reason too. Ishaan does not ignore it or laugh at it. He answers it with something true. If there were no learners' group, the fair thing would be to say so.

Third, the last words are "it's fine if you'd rather not." Persuading a friend is not the same as winning. Your friend's no is an answer, and a good friend can hear it. You might ask again another day, with a new reason - not the same one, louder.

Picture a little river between you and your friend. You are on one side with what you want. Your friend is on the other side with what they like. A reason is a bridge. A reason that is only about you stops halfway: it never reaches your friend's bank. A reason about what your friend likes lands on their side, and they can walk across if they want to. Pushing, begging or being unkind is like shouting across the water. It is loud, but it builds no bridge.

In section 5 you weighed two reasons and picked the stronger one. This section asks a new question: stronger for whom? When you persuade a friend, the strongest reason is a true one that matters to them. Next, in What's the other side?, you will notice that your friend may think differently for a good reason of their own. Later in this band you will spot adverts trying to persuade you, and in Practice you will name the other side and answer it, and learn which ways of arguing are fair.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. What if you give a fair, true reason, and your friend still says no? Kavya asks Lucia: "Shall we play the new board game at break? It has a treasure map, and you love treasure hunts." That is a good ask. The reason is true, and it fits Lucia. Lucia says: "I do love treasure hunts. But we sat still all morning, and I want to run around." Now there are two fair reasons. Kavya's reason is about the game. Lucia's reason is about how her body feels today. Neither of them is being unfair. Kavya did not argue badly just because Lucia said no. So what can Kavya do? She can accept it: "Okay, let's run around." She can offer a swap: "Let's play tag now, and the board game after lunch." What she should not do is ask again with the same reason, louder, or call Lucia boring. And here is a second hard one. Suppose Kavya had said: "The board game has a real gold coin inside!" when it does not. Lucia might say yes. But a reason that is not true is a trick, not a reason. A yes you get by tricking someone is not a fair yes, and it costs you your friend's trust. So a fair ask is judged by what you say, not only by whether you get a yes.

Did you know that the word persuade has something sweet hidden inside it? It comes from the Latin word persuadere. Per meant thoroughly, and suadere meant to advise or to urge. Word experts trace suadere back to a very old root meaning sweet or pleasant - the same root that gives English the word sweet. So to persuade someone was, in a way, to make an idea pleasant to them, not to force it on them. The same Latin word gives us dissuade, which means to talk someone out of something. And here is a second surprise. More than two thousand years ago, a Greek thinker called Aristotle wrote a book about persuading people. He said people are persuaded in three ways: by trusting the person who is speaking, by how they feel, and by the reasons they hear. When you persuade a friend fairly, you use all three. Your friend trusts you, you ask kindly, and you give a true reason.

Persuading is not winning. A fair ask can still get a no, and that is a real answer. Your own reason is not wrong just because it is about you. "I would like company" is true and kind to say. It simply gives your friend less to weigh than a reason about them. Some choices need a grown-up, not persuading. If a friend wants you to do something unsafe or unkind, you do not have to be persuaded, however good the reason sounds. Persuading a friend is not the same as an advert persuading you. You will look at adverts in section 8. A reason must be true to be fair, even when a made-up one would work better.

1. Think about your friend before you ask: what do they like?
2. Say what you want in one clear sentence.
3. Ask with a question: "Would you like to...?" or "Shall we...?"
4. Give one true reason that matters to your friend, not only to you.
5. Say it kindly, and say it once.
6. Do not beg, or ask again and again.
7. Do not say "I won't be your friend" or any other threat.
8. Do not be unkind about your friend's own choice.
9. Never say something untrue to get a yes.
10. Listen to your friend's reason as carefully as you gave yours.
11. Offer a fair swap, such as taking turns, when you both want different things.
12. Accept a no kindly. You can try another day, with a new reason.

• Aarav says to Meera: "Play chess with me! Please, please, please!"
• Aarav says to Meera: "You liked the puzzle game yesterday, and chess is a puzzle game too."
• Priya says to Tenzin: "Let's play your game first and mine after, so we both get a turn."
• Emily says to Grace: "Come to the reading club, because everyone else is going."
• Oliver says to Jack: "Let's play chess, because chess is the best game in the world."
• Lucia says to Mateo: "Try the new board game with me - it has a dragon in it, and you love dragons."

• Kavya says to Rohan: "If you don't play my game, I won't be your friend."
• Nandini says to Sana: "Come to the park with me - the new swings are up, and you said you wanted to try them."
• Rohan says to Dev: "Let's build the robot together, because you are good at wiring and I am good at drawing the plans."
• Hannah says to Ruby: "Read this book, because I liked it."
• Tom says to Ben: "You said your team needs a goalkeeper, and I can practise saving shots with you."
• Kofi says to Amara: "Join the chess club with me - it meets after school, when you said you are free."

What's the other side?

Most claims have another side. The other side is what someone who thinks differently could say, with a reason of its own.

The other side is not a fight. It is a different way of looking at the same thing, and it can be a good one. This is the fourth question of the chapter's Argument Check: What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit? What could the other side say?

One claim can have more than one other side. Look at this claim from Rohan: "Our class should get a pet fish, because fish are calm and easy to feed."

Notice three things. First, every reply wants something a little different, and every reply has a reason. None of them is silly. They just care about different things: holding a pet, the holidays, an easy job, taking turns.

Second, the other side does not have to be the exact opposite. "A fish is fine, but only if we take turns" agrees with part of the claim and asks for a change. That is another side too.

Third, look at what none of them do. None of them say "Rohan is wrong because Rohan always picks fish". None of them just shout "No fish!". Each one talks about the pet, not about Rohan, and each one gives a reason. Rohan can listen to all four and still choose the fish. But now Rohan knows what to think about: who feeds it in the holidays, and who cleans the tank.

Picture a tree in the middle of a playground. Aarav stands on one side and sees a swing hanging from a branch. Meera stands on the other side and sees a bird's nest. They are both telling the truth about the same tree. To see what Meera sees, Aarav does not have to agree with Meera. Aarav only has to walk round the tree and look. Asking "What could the other side say?" is walking round the tree.

Section 1 gave you a claim with a reason. Section 4 showed you how to say "I don't think so, because..." politely. Section 6 had you persuading a friend. This section turns round and asks what your friend could say back. It is the fourth question of the Argument Check. In Practice you will learn to name the other side clearly in section 15, and to answer it in section 16. In Craft you will learn to say the strongest other side honestly, even when it is hard to answer.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes it looks as if there is no other side. Read this: "The library opens at nine o'clock." Is there another side? Not really. That is a fact. You can check it by looking at the sign on the door. If someone says, "No, it opens at ten," you do not argue. You go and look. Now read this: "The library should open at eight o'clock." Is there another side? Yes. Someone could say, "Nine is better, because the librarian needs time to sort the books before children come in." That is a claim about what should happen, and people can think differently about it. So here is a test. If you can check it by looking, counting or asking someone who knows, check it. If it is about what is best, or what should happen, there is almost always another side. And here is a second hard one. Sometimes the other side has a good reason, and so do you. Farhan wants the canteen to sell mango juice every day, because most children like it. Nandini says, "Some children do not like mango, so we could change the juice each day." Both reasons are good. Neither of them is silly. Then you do not have to pick a winner straight away. You can look for a choice that cares about both reasons: mango juice on three days, a different juice on two. Seeing the other side is how you find that choice.

Did you know that there is a famous drawing that looks like two different animals? It is more than a hundred years old. Some people look at it and see a duck. Other people look at the very same lines and see a rabbit. Both of them are right. The drawing has not changed. Only the way of looking has changed. Once someone tells you about the other animal, you can usually see it too. And here is something from long ago in India. In shastrartha, a tradition of careful, learned debate, a speaker did not begin with their own view. They began by saying the other side's view, called the purvapaksha, fairly and in full. Only after that did they give their own conclusion, called the siddhanta. Why start with the other side? Because if you can say the other side so well that the other person nods and says, "Yes, that is what I think," then you really understand what you are arguing about. Then your own reason has something real to answer.

The other side is a different view with a reason. A plain "no", or something unkind about a person, is not the other side, even if it disagrees. The other side is not always the exact opposite. "A fish is fine, but only if we take turns" agrees with part of the claim and still thinks differently. Hearing the other side does not mean you must change your mind. You can listen, think, and still keep your view, with a reason. A fact you can check, such as "The library opens at nine," is not something to argue about. Check it instead.

1. Read the claim and its reason first.
2. Pretend to be someone who wants something different.
3. Ask, "What could that person say, and why?"
4. Look for a real reason, not a louder "no".
5. Keep the other side about the idea, the game or the rule, never about the person.
6. Say the other side the way the other person would say it, not a twisted version.
7. Remember that the other side can have a good reason too.
8. When someone only says "no", ask, "Why do you think that?"
9. If it is a fact you can check, check it instead of arguing.
10. After you have heard the other side, decide what you think and say your reason.

• Aarav says: "We should have a longer break, because we need time to play." Meera says: "A shorter break is better, because then school ends earlier."
• Kavya says: "Our class should get a hamster." Rohan says: "No! No hamster! No!"
• Priya says: "I see why you want a hamster, because it is soft and fun to hold. But a fish is easier to look after in the holidays."
• Tom says: "Our team should wear blue shirts." Grace says: "Red is better, because the other team wears blue and we would get mixed up."
• Emily says: "Anyone who wants the library open late is just lazy in the mornings."
• Kofi says: "I think board games are better at break, because we can play when it rains. But I know some of you want to run about after sitting still all morning."

• Farhan says: "The canteen should sell mango juice every day." Nandini says: "Some children do not like mango, so we could change the juice each day."
• Ishaan says: "Chess club is boring. Everyone knows it. It is just boring."
• Tenzin says: "Lots of you want the swings fixed first, and you have a point: the chains are rusty. But the slide has a crack, so the slide should be fixed first."
• Oliver says: "The school magazine should have more jokes." Hannah says: "More jokes would be fun, but then there would be less room for our stories."
• Ruby says: "Everyone wants the trip to the zoo." Harry says: "Not everyone. In our class vote, 9 of the 25 children chose the farm."
• Yuki says: "I think the garden club should grow flowers. You think it should grow vegetables, so we can eat them. That is a good reason too."

What does this advert want?

An advert is made to get you to buy or do something. A sign or a notice only tells you something. Both use words, but they want different things from you.

An advert does not always want you to buy. The chess club poster wants you to join. That is still asking you to do something. An advert is a claim, too: "You should buy this" or "You should join this". So you can ask the chapter's four questions about it: What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit? What could the other side say?

Most adverts mix two kinds of sentence. Some are facts you could check. Some are opinions, there to make you want the thing. Look at this advert for Hoppaloo wellies.

Notice three things. First, the facts in this advert may all be true. The wellies may really come in three colours and really have a frog on the toe. An advert is not lying just because it is an advert.

Second, the facts were chosen. The advert tells you about colours and frogs. It does not tell you how much the wellies cost, whether they keep your feet dry, or how long they last. An advert tells you the good things the makers want you to hear.

Third, the opinions do a lot of the work. "The most fun wellies ever" and "You will love jumping" are there to make you feel something. Feeling excited is fine. But a feeling is not a reason you can check. So when you read an advert, sort it in your head: what can I check, what is only an opinion, and what does it want me to do?

Picture an advert as a shop window with a bright light shining on one shelf. Everything on that shelf looks shiny and wonderful: the colours, the frog on the toe, the happy faces. But the rest of the shop is in the dark. The price tags, the boots that leak, the box that breaks are all on the dark shelves. When you see an advert, ask: what is in the light, and what is in the dark?

Section 3 taught you to tell a fact you can check from an opinion. Section 6 had you persuading a friend. This section shows you that adverts persuade too, and that you can use the same tools on them: find the claim, look for a reason, sort facts from opinions, and ask what the other side could say. In section 9 you will see that saying something loudly or often does not make it true, which adverts often try. In Practice, section 14, you will learn the names of the tricks adverts use and judge whether each one is fair.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Some things are an advert and a notice at the same time. Read this poster for the school bake sale. "Bake sale on Friday at 3 o'clock in the hall. Every cake costs 10 rupees. Come and buy one - the money buys new books for the library!" Some of it only tells you: Friday, 3 o'clock, the hall, 10 rupees. Those are facts you could check. But "Come and buy one" wants something from you. So this poster tells and asks at the same time. It is an advert, with some useful facts inside it. Is it a bad advert? No. It even gives you a reason: the money buys library books. And it tells you the price, which many adverts leave out. Wanting something from you is not unfair. The skill is just to notice that it does. Now here is a second hard one. A poster in the corridor says, "Please walk, do not run." It wants you to do something too. Is it an advert? Not quite. It is not selling anything or asking you to join anything. It is a rule, made to keep everyone safe. But it does have something in common with an advert: it is trying to get you to act, and it is fair to ask why. This one has a good answer: running in a busy corridor can make people bump and fall. So the question is never only "Is this an advert?" It is "What does this want me to do, and why?"

Did you know that the word advert hides a little picture inside it? Advert is short for advertisement, from advertise. It comes from an old Latin word, advertere, which means "to turn towards". So an advert is something that turns you towards a thing. It turns your eyes, and then it hopes to turn your feet towards the shop. And here is another one. The word persuade comes from the Latin word persuadere, built on suadere, "to urge" or "to advise". Word experts trace suadere back to a very old root that meant "sweet" or "pleasant", the same old root that later gave English the word sweet. So, long ago, the words for persuading were tied to the idea of sweetness, of making something sound pleasant. Adverts do exactly that. They make a juice, a pair of trainers or a toy sound as sweet as they can. Now you know to look past the sweetness and ask what the advert wants.

Not every advert is a lie. An advert can say true things, such as how many crayons are in a box. It still wants something from you. Not every advert is selling a thing. A poster asking you to join a club or come to a bake sale is an advert too. Wanting something from you is not wrong. Noticing it lets you decide for yourself. A sign or notice that only tells you something, such as when the library opens, is not an advert. Why some advert words sound so bright and happy is something later chapters look at, with words on their own. Here the question is only: what does this advert want?

1. Read the whole advert slowly, and look at the picture too.
2. Ask, "What does this advert want me to do?"
3. Ask, "Who made it, and what do they want?"
4. Find the facts: the parts you could check by looking or counting.
5. Find the opinions: words like best, tastiest, most fun.
6. Remember that a happy picture or a cheerful song is not a reason about the thing itself.
7. Ask what the advert does not tell you, such as the price.
8. Do not call an advert a lie just because it is an advert. Check what you can.
9. Tell an advert, which asks, from a notice, which only tells.
10. Decide for yourself, with a reason of your own, not the advert's.

• Meera sees a poster: "Crunchos cereal - the crunchiest breakfast in the world! Get yours today!"
• Rohan reads the cereal box: "Each box of Crunchos has a free sticker inside."
• Kavya's class poster says: "Bake sale on Friday at 3 o'clock in the hall. Come and buy a cake, because the money buys new library books!"
• Tom hears an advert: "ZoomFeet! ZoomFeet! Everyone is wearing ZoomFeet!"
• Emily reads the sign on the library door: "The library is open from 9 to 4 on Saturdays."
• Kofi watches an advert. Children drink BrightBean juice and everyone cheers. The voice says: "BrightBean - drink it and be happy!"

• Priya's school magazine has an advert: "Glimmo crayons: 24 colours in every box."
• Farhan reads: "Stompasaur, the robot dinosaur that walks and roars! Every child wants one!"
• Ishaan reads the chess club poster: "Join chess club! Tuesdays at lunch. Learn to think ahead and make new friends."
• Grace reads a bottle: "Fizzwhirl lemonade - the best lemonade ever made!"
• Oliver reads the Hoppaloo wellies advert and says: "It says they come in three colours. It does not say how much they cost."
• Yuki hears: "Zibblo blocks are fun, fun, FUN! Get Zibblo now!"

True, or just said loudly?

How a claim is said is not the same as whether it is true. Capital letters, shouting, !!! and saying it again and again make a claim louder. They do not make it true. They do not make it false either. Only checking tells you.

When you meet a loud claim, take the volume away and ask the four questions: What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit? What could the other side say? Being loud is never the answer to the second question.

There are four ways to make a claim sound bigger without making it any truer.

Notice three things. First, all four change how the claim sounds. None of them changes what is true. The house-points chart on the wall decides who has the most points, not the size of the letters on a poster.

Second, the fourth way is the trickiest. Many voices can feel like a check. But if nobody in the line has read the notice, ten people saying it is no better than one person saying it ten times. Ask, "Who has looked?"

Third, any of these claims might still be true. The canteen may really have pizza today. That is why you check instead of guessing. Loud does not mean false, any more than it means true. The menu board will tell you.

Picture a set of scales. On one side sits a claim. Shouting the claim is like blowing hard on the scales: lots of noise and air, but the pan does not go down. Capital letters, !!! and saying it ten times are just more blowing. Only a check puts real weight in the pan: the sign you read, the swings you looked at, the chart you counted, the librarian you asked. When you meet a loud claim, stop listening to the blowing and ask what weight is really in the pan.

In section 2 you learned that saying a claim louder does not make it a stronger argument. In section 3 you learned that a fact can be checked and an opinion cannot. This section joins them: a loud claim is still just a claim, so you check the ones you can and treat the rest as opinions. In section 8 you saw adverts; many adverts are loud, and now you know the volume is not a check. Next comes the first mixed review of everything in Discover. In Practice you will meet the same idea again, when an advert repeats one line many times so that it feels true.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes a claim is loud and repeated, and it is also true. Every morning your teacher says, "Running in the corridor is not safe." She says it again and again. A sign on the wall says it in capitals too. Is the claim true? Yes, and here is why: the corridor is narrow, the floor can be slippery, and children can bump into each other and fall. So what makes you believe it? Not the repeating, and not the capitals. The reason does. If your teacher said it only once, in a quiet voice, it would be just as true. Here is a second hard one. Sometimes you cannot check a claim at all, right now. Tenzin says, "The new library books arrive tomorrow!" You cannot see tomorrow. You do not have to believe it, and you do not have to say it is wrong. You can say, "I don't know yet. Who told you?" If the librarian told Tenzin, that is a good reason to think it is likely. If Tenzin just heard it in the line, you wait and see. A fair judge never says "true" because a claim is loud, and never says "false" because it is loud. A fair judge says "true", "not true" or "I don't know yet", and always gives a because.

Did you know that capital letters got the name "upper case" from a box? Long ago, printers made each page from small metal letters. They kept the letters in two wooden boxes, called cases. The capital letters lived in the top box, the upper case. The small letters lived in the box below it, the lower case. That is why we still say upper case and lower case today. So a capital letter is just a letter from the top box. It makes a word bigger. It does not make it truer. And here is a surprising thing about your own brain. Scientists who study how people think have found that when we hear a sentence many times, it starts to feel more true, even when it is not. The sentence feels familiar, and the brain mixes up "I have heard this before" with "this is true". That is why "How do I know?" is such a useful question. It stops your brain from taking a short cut.

Loud does not mean true, and loud does not mean false. A warning sign in capitals is often there for a very good reason. Check it, and if you cannot check it, be careful anyway. Some people speak loudly because they are excited, or far away, or because the place is noisy. That is fine, and it is not unkind. The loudness just does not tell you whether the claim is true. Some claims cannot be checked at all, because they are opinions. "Football is the best game" stays an opinion however loudly it is said, and so does "Cricket is the best game". When you cannot check right now, "I don't know yet" is a good answer, not a way of giving up.

1. Read the claim in a quiet voice in your head, even if it is in capitals or covered in !!!.
2. Take away the !!! and the big letters, and look at what is left.
3. Ask: how do I know this is true?
4. Check it if you can: look, count, read the sign, or ask someone who knows.
5. Do not believe a claim just because you have heard it many times.
6. Do not believe a claim just because someone sounds very sure.
7. Ask "Who has looked?" when lots of people say the same thing.
8. Do not call a loud claim false without checking it either.
9. Remember that a loud opinion is still an opinion.
10. Say "I don't know yet" when you cannot check, and give a reason when you make a claim yourself.

• Rohan shouts: THE FIELD IS FLOODED! NO GAMES TODAY!
• Meera says: The field is flooded - I just walked past and the goalposts are standing in water.
• Priya points at the bench: WET PAINT - PLEASE DO NOT SIT.
• Tom writes on the board: GREEN IS THE BEST COLOUR!!!
• Emily says: Sports day is on Friday. I read it on the school calendar this morning.
• Kofi says: Everyone keeps saying the pool is closed, so it must be closed.

• Kavya says: The canteen has dosa today. Dosa today! DOSA TODAY!
• Ishaan says: I am totally, totally sure the class trip is on Tuesday.
• Farhan says: The trip is on Thursday - the letter from school says so.
• Oliver's poster says: CHESS CLUB IS THE MOST FUN CLUB IN THE SCHOOL!
• Hannah says: The swings are fixed now. I played on them after school.
• Yuki reads the packet: PINGLEPOP JUICE! THE TASTIEST JUICE EVER! THE TASTIEST JUICE EVER!

First mixed review

This review mixes every Discover question. One tool handles them all: the four questions, then a judgement.

Each idea came from its own Discover section, from a claim and a reason in section 1 to loud and true in section 9; this review asks you to use them together. The four questions - What is the claim? What reason backs it? Does the reason fit? What could the other side say? - are the chapter's Argument Check in its simplest form.

Here is a short class talk checked line by line, just as you would check one of your own. Class 2 is choosing a day for the new reading club.

Notice three things. First, only two lines carry a reason that passes the tests, Priya's and Kofi's, and they point different ways. Four lines out of six gave no help at all, even the loud ones.

Second, Kofi disagreed with a because, kindly, about the idea and not about Aarav. That is the other side done well, and it is worth listening to.

Third, look at the fair judgement: "I agree with Priya, but Kofi's point needs checking. If the hall is busy on Fridays, Thursday might be better." The judge did not pick the loudest line or the most popular one. The judge weighed the two strong reasons, and said what needed checking.

Picture a set of scales with four steps leading up to it. At the first step you put the claim on the scales. At the second step you look for a reason to put in the pan: a loud voice, an opinion that only says the claim again or "everyone says so" weighs nothing. At the third step you test the reason's weight: does it fit, is it true, does it matter? At the fourth step you put the other side's reason in the other pan. Only then do you read the scales and say what you think, and why.

Discover is complete, and the four questions come with you into Practice. There the second question grows: a claim will carry two or three reasons, and you will ask whether each one is a fact that really supports the claim. You will compare strong evidence, like a count or someone who knows, with weak evidence, like one friend's story. The fourth question grows too: you will name the other side and answer it. And adverts will show you their tricks by name.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes two strong reasons point in different directions. Priya says reading club should be on Friday, because no homework is set on Fridays. Kofi says not Friday, because the hall is busy with sports club. Both reasons fit. Both can be checked. Both matter. Which one wins? Neither wins just by being said first, or loudest, or by more people. A fair judge does three things. First, check what can be checked: is the hall really busy on Fridays? Second, ask which reason matters more for this choice. A club with nowhere to meet cannot happen, so Kofi's point may matter more. Third, look for a choice that answers both: a different room on Friday, or Thursday if Thursdays are light on homework too. And here is a second hard one. An advert can contain a fact. "Crunchos - each box has twelve bars and a free sticker!" The twelve bars can be counted, and that part may be true. The advert still wants you to buy. Both things are true at once: the advert wants something, and some of what it says can be checked. You do not have to call it false. You just decide with a reason of your own.

Did you know that the word argument comes from an old Latin word, arguere, which means "to make clear"? So an argument is not a fight. It is a way of making something clear: here is what I think, and here is why. And here is something surprising. Long ago in India, thinkers of a school called Nyaya worked out how a careful argument should go, step by step. Their most famous example is about a hill. "The hill has fire, because it has smoke. Wherever there is smoke, there is fire, as in a kitchen. This hill has smoke like that. So the hill has fire." Look at what that example does. It gives a claim, the hill has fire. It gives a reason, it has smoke. And then it does something extra: it says why the reason fits, because wherever there is smoke, there is fire. That is your third question, does the reason fit, asked a very long time ago. You have been asking the same questions as thinkers from centuries ago.

This review mixes the Discover questions only. Longer arguments, with two or three reasons and evidence of different strengths, come in Practice. Every item here has one claim, one or two reasons, and a short reply. Real talk can be messier. Ask the four questions anyway, one at a time. "I need to check" is a real judgement, not a way of giving up. So is "I agree with part of it". An opinion is not a wrong sentence, and disagreeing is not unkind. Everyone may hold an opinion and give a reason for it. Loud is not true, and loud is not false. An advert wants something, but it is not always lying. Decide with your own because.

1. Treat every claim as new; do not guess from the one before.
2. Read it quietly, with the capitals and !!! taken away.
3. Ask question 1: what is the claim, and does it want me to buy or do something?
4. Ask question 2: is there a real reason, or only a louder claim?
5. Ask whether the reason can be checked, or is only an opinion.
6. Ask question 3: does the reason fit, is it true, does it matter?
7. Do not stop at the first because you find.
8. Ask question 4: what could the other side say, with a reason?
9. Keep every reason about the idea, not the person.
10. Judge with a because: I agree, I don't think so, or I need to check.

• Aarav says: We should have a class pet.
• Meera says: We should have a class fish, because a fish is quiet and does not need walking.
• Priya says: I don't think so, because our classroom gets too hot for a fish tank in summer.
• Tom says: Fish are the best pets in the whole world!
• Emily reads a poster: SPLASHO FISH FOOD - YOUR FISH WILL LOVE IT! EVERYONE BUYS IT!
• Lucia says: The small tank holds twenty litres - it says so on the box.

• Rohan says: Sports day should be on Saturday, because Saturday is the best day.
• Kavya says: Sports day should be on Saturday, because the field is booked for a football match on Friday.
• Ishaan says: I don't think so, because some families visit their grandparents at the weekend.
• Oliver shouts: SATURDAY! SATURDAY! SATURDAY!
• Hannah says: The school calendar shows sports day on a Friday this year.
• Yuki says: Saturday will be too hot for races. I just know it.

Building accuracy · ages 8–12

A claim with two or three reasons

An argument starts with one claim. It grows stronger with reasons - but only with reasons that pass three tests.

Six lines, and only two of them are real reasons. Those two are worth more than the other four together.

In the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - this section works on the second question, Support: what really holds the claim up, and is each piece of support its own?

Count the real reasons, not the becauses. Here is one claim argued four ways.

Notice three things.

First, the number of becauses tells you nothing on its own. The second argument is the longest of the four, and it has only one reason.

Second, real reasons can be checked one at a time. "Most members are free on Fridays" could be tested by asking the members; "the library is empty then" could be tested by looking. Either one could turn out true while the other turns out false. That is how you know they are two reasons, not one reason twice.

Third, linking words such as also, secondly and as well help a listener hear where a new reason begins, but they cannot turn a repeat into a new reason. Those words belong to ch21 Transitions & Flow, and the shape of a paragraph that carries reasons belongs to ch27 Paragraph Architecture. This section asks only whether each reason is real.

Picture the claim as a tabletop and each reason as a leg. With one leg, the table tips at the first push. With two or three real legs, set apart, it stands. But look closely at each leg. A leg painted a second colour is still one leg - that is a reason said again in new words. A leg standing beside the table touches nothing - that is a reason about something else. And a leg propped under a different table is holding up the other side's claim. Count only the legs that reach the floor under this table.

In Discover you learnt that a claim becomes an argument when a reason joins it, and you compared a strong reason with a weak one. This section adds a second and a third reason, and three tests for each. Section 12 asks whether a reason that sounds like a fact really supports the claim; section 13 weighs evidence; sections 15 and 16 bring in the other side. In Craft, section 23 names the hidden link between a reason and its claim: the warrant.

Here is a hard case: are these two reasons, or one? "The class trip should go to the science museum, because it has a hands-on gallery, and because we learn best by doing things ourselves." It looks like two. There are two becauses, and the two parts say different things. Try the stand-alone test: would each part still back this claim if it were the only reason given? Take the second part alone: "The trip should go to the science museum, because we learn best by doing things ourselves." That does not point to the museum at all - a farm or a pottery workshop would fit just as well. Its real job is to explain why the hands-on gallery matters. So it is not a second reason. It is the first reason's explanation: the link that shows why the gallery supports the claim. That is not a weakness. A reason with its link explained is better than a bare one. But it is still one reason, and a fair speaker should not count it as two. A real second reason would stand alone: "and the museum gives school groups a free guide." Now a case that goes the other way. "The school garden should grow beans, because beans grow fast, and because beans need little water." Both reasons are about beans, so they can look like twins. But fast growth and little water can each be true without the other, and each one backs the claim by itself. These are two reasons. Sharing a subject does not make reasons twins; saying the same thing does. So the test is never how different the words look. It is whether each reason carries some of the weight on its own.

The word because has a story inside it. In Middle English it was two words, by cause - "by the cause". When you say because, you are promising that a cause, a reason, is coming next. That is why "because I said so" feels empty: the word promises a cause and then gives none. The word argument comes from the Latin arguere, "to make clear" or "to show". At its root, an argument is not a quarrel. It is a way of making something clear to someone else. And long ago, the Nyaya tradition of Indian logic gave the claim and the reason separate names. Its five-step argument begins with the pratijna, the proposition - "the hill has fire" - and follows it with the hetu, the reason - "because it has smoke". The thinkers who built it treated the claim and the reason as two different parts, each with its own job. Many centuries later, you use the same split every time you write a claim and then a because.

Two or three reasons is a guide, not a law. One very strong reason can carry a small claim, and a big decision may need more than three. What matters is that each reason you keep is real. A reason with its explanation is still one reason. Explaining why a reason matters makes it stronger, but do not count the explanation as a second reason. This section tests whether a reason is new, on topic and on side. Whether a fact really supports the claim is section 12's question, and how strong each piece of support is - a measured result or one friend's story - is section 13's. Linking words such as also and secondly belong to ch21; the paragraph that carries your reasons belongs to ch27.

1. Write the claim first, in one clear sentence.
2. List every reason you can think of before you judge any of them.
3. Cut any reason that is only the claim said again.
4. Cut any reason that repeats another reason in new words.
5. Cut any reason about something nearby but not about this claim.
6. Move any reason that helps the other side out of your list - you will answer it later.
7. Keep two or three reasons that each stand on their own.
8. Test each one: if it were taken away, would the argument lose something?
9. Do not count a reason and its explanation as two reasons.
10. Read the claim and reasons aloud, each starting with because, and listen for any that sound like an echo.

• Aarav says: "The library should open on Saturdays, because many of us have no quiet place to read at home, and the Saturday chess club has nowhere to meet."
• Meera says: "Our class should keep the reading corner, because the reading corner is good and we should keep it."
• From Kavya's note to the garden club: "We should plant tomatoes this term. They grow quickly, they need very little space, and they are quick to grow."
• Tom says: "Sports day should start at nine, not eleven, because the field is cooler in the morning, and the younger classes get tired after lunch."
• From Hannah's letter to the school magazine: "The magazine should have a puzzle page. Puzzles are popular in the reading club, and a puzzle page would bring in new readers. Also, the magazine should have a puzzle page."
• Kofi says: "The bus stop outside school needs a shelter, because we wait there in the rain, and the metal bench is too hot to sit on in the afternoons."

• From Rohan's speech to the house meeting: "Our house should run the bake sale in March, because the hall is free that month, the money can buy new football nets, and no other house has asked for that date."
• Ishaan says: "Recess should be longer, because recess is too short."
• Priya says: "We should get a class fish, because a fish is calm in the classroom, a fish is quiet, and a fish never makes a noise."
• Oliver says: "The park's swings should be fixed before the summer holidays, because two of the chains are broken, and children use the park most during the holidays."
• Grace says: "The music room should stay open at lunch, because the band needs practice before the concert, and it rained on Tuesday."
• Yuki says: "Our robotics club should get a second table, because the club has grown from eight to fifteen members, and two teams cannot build on one table at once."

Can this fact actually support this claim?

A reason can only support a claim if it passes two tests. Ask them in order.

Only two of the six reasons pass both tests. Notice that the wrapper did not decide anything: the sentence that says "it is a fact" is the opinion, and the plain sentences are the facts.

Chapter 22's section 21 asks whether a report keeps opinion words out of its sentences. This section asks a different question: whether a reason can hold a claim up. In the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - that is Support, with a first look at Warrant: is the support real, and does it actually reach this claim?

Opinions often arrive dressed as facts. Here are the commonest coats, and what is underneath.

Notice three things.

First, take the coat off and read what is left. "Chess is boring" cannot be checked, so the coat changed nothing. And a plain sentence with no coat - "the chess club has eighteen members" - can be a fact without announcing it.

Second, a fact about opinions is still a fact. "Most of us like football" is vague: who counted? But "in Monday's class vote, twenty-two of thirty chose football" can be checked by looking at the tally. The votes are opinions; the count of them is a fact.

Third, one sentence can hold both. "The library closes at three, which is far too early." Closes at three can be checked and may support the claim. Far too early is the speaker's judgement - it is the claim said again. Keep the fact, and see the opinion for what it is.

Picture a bridge from a reason to a claim, built out of planks. A fact is a real wooden plank: you can press on it with your foot before you trust it. An opinion dressed as a fact is a plank painted on a sheet of paper - from far away it looks the same, and it gives way the moment someone doubtful steps on it. A true fact about something else is a real, solid plank lying in the grass beside the river. It is strong, but it does not reach across. Only a real plank that reaches the far bank carries a listener over to the claim.

In Discover, section 3 taught you to tell a fact from an opinion: "it is raining" can be checked, and "rain is the best weather" cannot. Section 11 gave you two or three real reasons. This section asks whether each of those reasons is support a doubtful listener can check, and whether it reaches the claim. Next, section 13 weighs how strong a checked fact is - a count of three hundred against one friend's story - and in Craft, section 23 names the link a fact needs to reach its claim: the warrant.

Here is a hard case, and it turns on one class and three reasons. Class 6B is choosing a game for its weekly sports hour. Farhan argues: "We should play football." He offers three reasons on three different days. Reason one: "Football is the best game there is." That is an opinion. Nothing can measure "best". A classmate who prefers cricket has been given nothing to think about. Reason two: "In Monday's class vote, twenty-two of thirty chose football." This is a fact about opinions. The votes themselves are what people like - but the count can be checked on the tally sheet. And it touches the claim: sports hour belongs to the class, so what most of the class wants is a fair reason for what the class plays. Reason three: "The school has twelve footballs and only two cricket bats." Also a fact, and it touches the claim from a different side: it says football is the game the class can actually play together. Now the hard part. Suppose Farhan uses reason two for a different claim: "Football is the best game in the world." Does the vote support that? No. The vote counts what thirty people in one class like this term. It cannot measure which game is best anywhere else. The same fact that supported one claim does nothing for another. So a fact is not support on its own. It is support for a particular claim - when it can be checked, and when it reaches. Ask both questions every time, even of a fact you have already accepted once.

The word fact comes from the Latin factum, "a thing done", from facere, "to do" or "to make". So a fact began as something that had happened - something you could, in principle, go and see. The word opinion comes from the Latin opinio, from opinari, "to think" or "to suppose". An opinion, at its root, is what someone thinks - which is why it can be honest and sincere and still give a listener nothing to check. And the word evidence comes from the Latin evidens, "obvious" or "clear to see", built on videre, "to see" - the same root that gives us video and vision. So evidence, at its root, is something that lets other people see for themselves. That is the whole of this section in three old words. A fact can be seen; an opinion is thought; and evidence is what lets someone else see what you saw.

An opinion is not a bad thing to have, or to say. "I like chess" is honest, and for your own choice it may be reason enough. It just cannot make a claim stronger for a listener who does not share it. A judgement from someone who really knows the field - the school nurse on rest, a coach on training - is a different kind of support from a plain opinion. Section 13 weighs it. This section treats a checkable fact as support only if it touches the claim. Whether it is strong enough is section 13's question. Chapter 22 asks whether a report's words stay neutral; this section asks whether a reason holds a claim up.

1. Judge one reason at a time.
2. Cover the wrapper words first: it is a fact that, everyone knows, obviously, the truth is.
3. Ask how you would check what is left: count, measure, look or look it up.
4. If there is no way to check it, call it an opinion.
5. If it can be checked, ask whether the claim would be weaker if the fact were different.
6. Set aside true facts that do not touch the claim.
7. Treat a counted vote or survey as a fact about what people think.
8. Split a mixed sentence: keep the checkable part, name the opinion part.
9. Swap an opinion reason for a fact a doubtful listener could check.
10. Ask the reach question again whenever a fact is moved to a new claim.

• Rohan says: "The canteen should sell idli at break, because it is a fact that idli is the best snack."
• Kavya says: "The park's swings should be repaired, because two of the four chains snapped this month."
• Ishaan says: "The reading club should meet on Thursdays, because the library has new shelves."
• Emily says: "Class 5 should play football at sports hour, because in Monday's class vote, twenty-two of thirty chose football."
• Jack says: "Our team should get new shirts, because everyone knows our shirts are the worst in the league."
• Amara says: "The bus stop needs a shelter, because it rained on fourteen of the twenty school days last month, and there is nowhere dry to wait."

• Priya says: "The library should stay open until five, because it closes at three, which is far too early."
• Nandini says: "The garden club should plant sunflowers, because sunflowers are obviously the most beautiful flower."
• Tenzin says: "The chess club should move to the big room, because the club has eighteen members and the small room has eight chairs."
• Oliver says: "Recess should be ten minutes longer, because the school was built in 1962."
• Grace says: "Our class should keep the fish tank, because it is lovely to look at, and the science teacher uses it for a lesson every week."
• Mateo says: "The school should save for a second minibus, because the football team missed three away matches this term while the only minibus was being repaired."

Strong and weak evidence

Evidence is what you put forward to show that a claim is true. Some evidence is strong and some is weak, and you can tell them apart by asking four questions.

Look at Coach Daniel. The same person gives strong evidence about running and weak evidence about cake labels. Strength is not a badge a person wears; it belongs to a piece of evidence on a particular claim.

This is step 2 of the Argument Check - Support: what evidence backs the claim, and how strong is it? Step 1 still comes first (what exactly is the claim?), and later you ask whether the evidence really connects to it (Warrant) and what the other side could say (Counter) - then you judge.

Evidence comes in a few common kinds. Each kind can be strong, and each kind has a usual way of turning weak.

Notice three things.

First, no kind is strong every time. Even a big number can be weak. If the chess club asks only its own members whether the chess club should get the hall, a result of 30 out of 30 tells you what chess players want, not what the school needs. A count is only as fair as the people it asked.

Second, a single story is not always weak. If the claim is "this swing is unsafe" and a chain on that very swing snapped yesterday, one case is exactly the evidence that matters. One story is weak only when it is asked to speak for everyone.

Third, weak evidence is not useless. "Everyone says the bus is late" is a good reason to go and check the bus times. It is a starting point for finding strong evidence, not a finishing point for an argument.

In Craft (section 22) you will name these kinds in full - fact, statistic, expert opinion, example - and weigh each one's limits more closely. Here, the four questions are enough.

Picture a set of old kitchen scales with two pans. Each piece of evidence is something you place on a pan. A measured count is a heavy brick. One friend's story is a pebble. "Everyone says so" is a feather: it looks like a lot of things at once, but it hardly moves the pan. Before you place anything, check it is going on the right pan - evidence about a different claim weighs nothing on this one. Then watch which way the scales tip, not how many things are piled up.

Section 11 gave a claim two or three reasons. Section 12 asked whether a fact actually supports the claim it sits beside. This section weighs that support: strong or weak, and why. Section 14 uses it at once, because adverts often lean on weak evidence that looks strong - everyone is buying it, a famous face likes it. In Craft, section 22 names the types of evidence in full and section 23 asks the hidden question: why does this evidence support this claim at all?

Here is a hard one: the same piece of evidence can be strong for one claim and weak for another. Class 7 has a vote. 27 of 32 students choose the science museum for the class trip. Claim A: "Most of Class 7 wants to go to the science museum." The vote is strong evidence. The claim is about what the class wants, and the vote counts what nearly every member of the class wants. All four tests pass: many cases, written down, from the people themselves, about exactly this claim. Claim B: "The science museum is the trip where Class 7 will learn the most." Now Grace uses the same vote as her evidence. It is much weaker here. A vote shows what people like. It does not show what teaches most. A trip can be popular because it has a good cafe or a long bus ride with friends. Is Grace's evidence useless, then? Not quite. Students who want to go may pay more attention, and that is worth something. But it does not carry Claim B on its own. Stronger evidence for Claim B would be about learning: what last year's class could explain after each trip, or what the science teacher, who has taken classes to both places, has seen. So the fair judgement is: the vote is strong evidence that the class wants the museum, and weak evidence that the museum teaches most. This is why the fourth test - does it fit? - matters so much. You never weigh evidence on its own. You weigh it against the claim it is being asked to hold up. A brick on the wrong pan of the scales does not tip anything.

The word evidence comes from the Latin evidens, meaning clear or plain to see, from videre, "to see" - the same root as video and vision. Evidence, in its oldest sense, is what lets other people see for themselves. That is a good test even today: could someone else look at this and see what you saw? The word anecdote, a short story about one event, comes from a Greek word meaning "not published" or "not given out". An anecdote was a story passed along by word of mouth, never written down and checked. That is exactly why one friend's story is usually weaker than a written record. And statistic grew from the Latin status, a state: in the eighteenth century, the German word Statistik meant the study of facts about a state, such as how many people lived in it. Counting many cases is an old way of seeing clearly. One more surprise is about your own mind. People tend to remember a vivid story far more easily than a number. That is why one dramatic story can feel stronger than a careful count, even when the count is the better evidence. Feeling convinced and being given strong evidence are not the same thing - which is why the four questions help.

Strong does not mean certain. Strong evidence makes a claim much more likely, but new evidence can still change the picture. Weak does not mean false. "Everyone says the bus is late" may be true; the evidence simply cannot show it yet. Weak evidence is a reason to go and check. One example can be strong for a claim about that one case, or about what can happen, and weak for a claim about what always happens. Whether a fact actually supports a claim, and whether an opinion is dressed up as a reason, was section 12's question. The full list of evidence types belongs to Craft section 22, and naming the jump from one story to everyone as a fallacy waits for Craft section 28. Here you weigh.

1. Find the claim first, so you know what the evidence must hold up.
2. Weigh each piece on its own, one line at a time.
3. Ask how many cases it covers: one story, or a count of many?
4. Ask whether it was checked - measured, counted or written down - or only said.
5. Ask who says it, and whether they know this field.
6. Ask whether it fits this claim, this place and this time.
7. Weigh the pieces; never just count them.
8. Treat "everyone says so" as a reason to go and count, not as a count.
9. Ask who was asked before you trust a big number.
10. In your own arguments, lead with your strongest piece and say where it came from.

• Meera says: "The library should stay open until 5 pm, because on every Friday last month the sign-in book showed more than 40 students still reading at closing time."
• Farhan says: "Our cricket team should practise on Wednesdays, because everyone says Wednesday is best."
• From Ishaan's speech to the class: "Homework should be shorter. My friend Dev had a lot one night and was too tired to play."
• Emily says: "We need a crossing guard at the bus stop. Mr Hughes, who has run the road-safety club for six years, counted 30 cars a minute passing at 8:15."
• Oliver says: "The new board game Sumbloom is great for learning maths, because Sam, the most popular player in our year, loves it."
• Kofi says: "The school garden's tomatoes need more water. Mrs Mensah measured the soil every morning for two weeks, and it was dry on 11 of the 14 days."

• Nandini says: "The reading club's members really enjoy it: 22 of its 28 members signed up again this term."
• Aarav says: "This swing is unsafe right now - a chain snapped yesterday, and the park keeper has roped it off."
• Priya says: "Sports day should move to March. My cousin says it is cooler then, and the school's weather log shows March afternoons were 6 degrees cooler than April ones last year."
• Hannah says: "Everyone in the robotics club will love the new kit - I tried it and loved it."
• Tom says: "The bake sale raised more money this year: the treasurer's book shows 212 pounds this year and 160 last year."
• Yuki says: "The new canteen menu is the healthiest choice, because 30 of 34 students voted for it."

How adverts persuade

An advert is an argument. Its claim is nearly always the same: buy this, or choose this. What changes is the support. Three techniques turn up again and again.

Notice that each technique has a fair column. A technique is not the problem on its own. The problem is a technique standing where a reason should be.

Run the Argument Check on any advert. Claim: what does it want me to do or believe? Support: is the technique a real reason? Warrant: does a crowd, a face or a repeated line actually show the product is good for me? Counter: what has the advert left out? Then judge.

Here is the same lemonade advertised in an unfair way and a fairer way, technique by technique.

Notice three things.

First, every fairer version adds something you could check: a count from a real taste table, a reason from someone whose job involves the product. The unfair versions add a crowd, a famous face or a sound - and nothing to check.

Second, repetition is never a reason by itself. Hearing a name ten times makes it familiar, and familiar things can feel trustworthy, but you have learned nothing new about the lemonade. Repetition is fair only as a reminder of reasons already given.

Third, even the fairer versions leave things out. Who ran the taste table? Were the tasters children or adults? What does a bottle cost? That is step 4 of the Argument Check: what does the advert not say? A fair advert gives you a real reason; it does not give you every reason.

Adverts also persuade through feelings, which section 17 looks at, and through catchy words and sounds, which belong to neighbour chapters: ch26 names figures such as rhyme, and ch22 tells a loaded word from a neutral one. In Craft, section 28 meets bandwagon again as a fallacy that can turn up in any argument, not only in adverts.

Picture an advert as a shop window. Outside the window stands a crowd - that is bandwagon. A famous face is painted on the glass - that is testimonial. The same sign hangs in the window ten times - that is repetition. None of these show you what is on the shelf. To judge fairly, step past the crowd, the face and the signs, go inside, and read the label: what is it, what does it do, what does it cost? A fair advert lets you see the shelf through the window.

In Discover, section 8 asked you to notice that an advert wants something from you. Section 13 taught you to weigh evidence: "everyone says" and a famous name outside their field are weak. This section names the three techniques adverts use to make weak evidence look strong. Section 17 adds persuading through feelings, and section 18 asks whether a way of arguing is fair. In Craft, bandwagon returns as a fallacy (section 28), and testimonial grows into ethos, the appeal to credibility (section 24).

Here is a hard one: an advert that uses all three techniques at once, with something real mixed in. "Join the 2,000 families who switched to Lunchlark lunch boxes this year! 'The clips have not broken once in a whole year of school bags,' says Ms Adeyemi, a mother of three. Lunchlark - the box that lasts. Lunchlark - the box that lasts." Take it line by line with the Argument Check. The claim: buy a Lunchlark box, because it lasts. Line 1 is bandwagon, but with a number. 2,000 families is a count, which is better than "everyone". Still, it counts buyers, not happy buyers, and we do not know who counted. It shows the box is popular, not that it lasts. Line 2 is a testimonial from an ordinary user. She is not famous, and she gives a specific detail - the clips, a whole year, three children's bags. That is a real reason. But it is one family's experience. Line 3 is repetition. "The box that lasts" is the claim itself, said twice. It adds no support. So is the advert fair? The fair judgement is: partly. It gives one small real reason - one family's year of unbroken clips - and two techniques that borrow a crowd and a sound. It is not dishonest, but the claim "the box that lasts" is far bigger than the evidence. Before buying, a careful shopper would ask: of the 2,000 boxes, how many clips broke? That count would turn a pebble of evidence into a brick. An advert can be partly fair, and saying so precisely is better than calling it all a trick or all true.

The word advertise comes, through French, from the Latin advertere, "to turn towards". An advert is something that turns your attention towards a product - which is exactly what repetition and famous faces are designed to do. Testimonial comes from the Latin testis, "a witness". The same root gives us testify and testimony. A testimonial asks you to treat a person as a witness for the product. The fair question is the one you would ask of any witness: did they see something real, and do they know what they are talking about? The bandwagon was a real wagon. In American parades of the nineteenth century, it carried the band at the front. To "jump on the bandwagon" meant joining whatever seemed to be popular and winning. And repetition works on your mind in a surprising way. Psychologists have found that people tend to feel warmer towards things they have seen or heard many times, even when they have learned nothing new about them. It is called the mere-exposure effect. That is why a jingle can feel like a good reason when it is only a familiar sound.

Not every advert is unfair. An advert can inform you: what a product does, what it costs, where to buy it. A technique is unfair only when it stands in the place of a reason. Naming a technique is not a verdict. "That is a testimonial" starts the judgement; the Argument Check finishes it. A testimonial from an ordinary person is not automatically fair, and one from a famous person is not automatically unfair. Ask what they know and what reason they give. This section uses only invented products and invented people. Feelings in adverts are section 17's; figures such as rhyme are ch26's; loaded words are ch22's; who pays for an advert and how that shapes it is studied as bias in Master section 33.

1. Find the advert's claim first: what does it want you to do or believe?
2. Read every line, one at a time.
3. Name each technique you find: bandwagon, testimonial or repetition.
4. For bandwagon, ask who was counted, and what the number really shows.
5. For testimonial, ask what the person knows about this product, and what reason they give.
6. For repetition, ask what you have learned that is new. Usually: nothing.
7. Look for any line that gives a reason you could check.
8. Ask what the advert leaves out: price, how long it lasts, what is inside.
9. Judge the line, not the product: fair, unfair, or partly fair.
10. When you make a poster yourself, lead with a reason, not a crowd, a face or a slogan.

• Meera's class made a poster for the school fair: "Everyone's buying Glimmo crayons - don't be the only one without them!"
• Rohan reads a cereal box aloud: "Max Lightfoot, the famous racing driver, says Zibbo Crunch is the cereal for champions!"
• Kavya hears a radio jingle: "Inkwhirl pens. Inkwhirl pens. Write it right with Inkwhirl pens."
• Grace sees a poster in the bike shop: "Mr Hughes, who has fixed bikes for twenty years, says the Pedalpop bell screws he fitted three years ago have still not rusted."
• Tom reads a label: "Splashkin bottles hold 750 ml and fit the side pocket of most school bags."
• Lucia passes a sign: "Join the 10,000 families who chose Lunchlark lunch boxes this year!"

• Ishaan watches an advert: "'I loved Fizzlewick lemonade so much I drank three bottles!' says a smiling child."
• Priya makes a poster: "Join the reading club - 22 of our 28 members signed up again this term."
• Nandini hears: "Bounzo trainers - the trainers everybody's talking about!"
• Hannah reads a toothpaste box: "Mintwhistle - fresh breath, fresh breath, fresh breath!"
• Oliver's poster for the school play: "Tickets are 50p, the play lasts one hour, and every penny goes to new library books."
• Mateo sees a billboard: "Puffwhirl popcorn - the number one popcorn!"

Naming the other side

The other side of an argument is not just the word "no". It is someone else's argument: a claim of their own, with a reason of their own. To name the other side, you say both - and you say them the way that person would.

The check for every row is the nod test: would someone who disagrees read your sentence and say, "Yes, that is what I think"? This is the fourth question of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - and this section works on the first half of Counter: naming the opposing point fairly, before section 16 teaches you to answer it.

Where does the other side come from? Usually from someone who cares about something your claim puts at risk. Find what they care about, and their reason appears.

Notice three things.

First, the other side nearly always cares about something real: money, time, safety, quiet, fairness, or the care of a person or a pet. When you cannot think of the other side's reason, ask what your claim might cost someone.

Second, the other side is a person, or a group of people, with a reason - not a mistake to be laughed at. Plain words such as "the neighbours say" keep it fair; words such as "a few moaners" judge them before their point is heard. (Choosing neutral words is ch22 Tone & Register's subject; here the question is only whether your description is fair.)

Third, the other side is not always the exact opposite. Someone might say "Yes, but not this term" or "Yes, but only on Fridays". A middle position is still another side, and it deserves to be named just as carefully. When there are several other sides, name the strongest one: the one that would change the decision if it turned out to be true.

Picture the argument as a see-saw in the playground. Your claim and your reasons sit on one end. If you talk as though the other end is empty, the see-saw seems to have tipped your way already - but everyone watching can see that someone is sitting there. Naming the other side means saying out loud who sits on the other end and how heavy their reason is. Only when both ends are in view can anyone judge which way the see-saw really tips.

In Discover, section 7 asked you to notice that someone could reasonably think differently. Here, in section 15, you say exactly what they think and why. Section 16 answers the point you have named, and section 19 puts both moves into a persuasive paragraph. In Craft, sections 25 and 26 grow this into concession and rebuttal: naming the strongest opposing point honestly, then answering it without brushing it aside. In Master, a formal debate (section 34) gives the other side a whole team of its own.

Here is the hard case: the other side's best reason is a good one, and you are not sure you can answer it. Priya wants the class trip to go to the planetarium, and Priya knows what the parents' committee will say: "The zoo trip costs less, and every family pays for the trip." That is a strong reason. Priya is tempted to name a different, easier one instead: "Some people might say the zoo has more animals to look at." Run the nod test on both. Would the parents' committee nod at "the zoo has more animals"? Perhaps, but it is not why they would vote for the zoo. Would they nod at "the zoo costs less, and every family pays"? Yes - that is exactly their point. So the cost is the other side, and the animals are a decoy. Then ask the second question: which objection would change the decision if it were true? The animals would not; the cost might. That is another sign that the cost is the strongest objection. So the fair judgement is that Priya names the cost, even though it is hard. And something useful happens when Priya does: Priya may find that the claim needs to change. "The trip should go to the planetarium if the class fund can pay half of each ticket" is a better claim than the one Priya started with. Naming the strongest other side is not losing. It is how a fair arguer finds the claim that is actually worth defending. A second hard bit: sometimes you do not know what the other side thinks. Then do not guess the silliest reason. Ask someone who disagrees, or picture one real person - the caretaker, the coach, a parent - and write what that person would say.

The word argument comes from the Latin verb arguere, which meant "to make clear" or "to show". An argument, in its oldest sense, is something that makes a matter clear - and a matter is not clear until both sides of it can be seen. The idea of this section is also very old. In the Indian tradition of formal learned debate called shastrartha, a debater was expected to begin by stating the opposing view - the purvapaksha, a Sanskrit word for "the prior side" - fairly and in full. Only after that came the debater's own conclusion, the siddhanta. Stating the other view so well that its own supporters would accept the statement was treated as part of the skill, not a weakness. In other words, debaters long ago treated the nod test as the first step of arguing well. You cannot honestly answer a view you have not first stated fairly.

Naming the other side is not agreeing with it. You still hold your claim; you have simply shown that you know what stands against it. Not every claim has a strong other side. "Water is wet" has none worth naming. Choosing a claim that people can genuinely disagree about is a Craft skill (section 21). Do not invent a reason for the other side that you are only guessing at. If you are not sure, ask someone who disagrees, or picture one real person. Naming is only half of the move. An objection you name and then leave unanswered may persuade your reader more than your own reasons do - section 16 teaches the answer. How plain or loaded your words are belongs to ch22 Tone & Register; this section only asks whether the description is fair.

1. Picture one real person who disagrees: a teacher, a parent, the coach, the librarian.
2. Ask what your claim might cost them: money, time, safety, quiet, fairness.
3. Write their claim and their reason: "They would say... because...".
4. Never stop at "some people disagree" - say what they think.
5. Never stop at a bare "no" - add the reason they would give.
6. Use plain words for the other side, never words that sneer.
7. Run the nod test: would they agree that this is what they think?
8. Check that the person really disagrees with your claim, not with something else.
9. When there are several other sides, name the strongest: the one that could change the decision.
10. Remember that a middle position, such as "yes, but not this term", is another side too.
11. Do not swap the strongest objection for an easier one because it is hard to answer.

• From Aarav's speech to the class: "Some teachers will say a longer recess leaves less time for lessons, and the timetable is already full."
• Meera says: "The chess club should meet twice a week. Some people say it should not."
• Ishaan wrote: "People who want the library shut at lunch just do not like students."
• Emily says: "Some families will say the bake sale should allow shop-bought cakes too, because not every family has time to bake."
• From Oliver's note to the head teacher: "A few moaners will whinge that the swings are noisy."
• Kofi says: "Our team should train on Saturdays, because the pitch is free then. The coach would say Saturday is the only day some players see their families, so it should stay a rest day."

• Priya says: "The class trip should go to the planetarium. Parents may say the zoo costs less, and every family pays for the trip."
• Farhan wrote: "The community garden should open on Sundays. Others think differently, but they are wrong."
• Nandini says: "The robotics club wants the music room on Fridays. The music teacher would say the band rehearses there on Fridays and the drum kit cannot be moved."
• Grace wrote: "Anyone who wants homework at the weekend must want us to be miserable."
• Tom says: "The later school bus is a good idea. Some parents might say it brings children home after dark in winter, and that is a fair worry."
• Mateo says: "The football team should get new shirts. The team's treasurer may say the old shirts still fit, and the money is needed for a new goal net."

Answering the other side

To answer the other side, reply to the exact point they made, and give a reason. There are four honest ways to do it.

Every honest answer passes two tests: the same-point test (is it about the very worry the other side raised?) and the because test (does it give a reason?). This is the second half of the fourth question of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge: section 15 named the counter-point, and this section answers it.

Some replies look like answers but fail one of the two tests. Learn to spot them in your own writing first.

Notice three things.

First, the swings are not dangerous at all is a true sentence, and it is about the swings, but it is not about noise. Staying on the same subject is not the same as answering the same point. Underline the exact worry, and check that your answer touches it.

Second, attacking the people who raised a point does not answer the point, even if the attack were true. Section 18 looks closely at attacking the person instead of the idea; here, notice only that it fails the same-point test.

Third, an answer does not have to win. Changing the claim - asking for Fridays only, or ten minutes instead of twenty - is an honest answer when the other side is right about part of it. It often persuades more than refusing to move. (Words such as however and although can introduce an answer; choosing them is ch21 Transitions & Flow's subject. This section is about what the answer says.)

Go back to the playground see-saw from the last section. Naming the other side showed everyone who sits on the far end and how heavy their reason is. Answering is what you do about that weight. You can show that it is lighter than it looked (check it), add a heavier reason of your own on your end (weigh it), lift the weight off altogether with a fix (fix it), or move along the plank to a place where the see-saw balances (change the claim). Shouting at the see-saw, or at the person sitting on it, does not move it at all.

Section 15 taught you to name the other side; this section answers it. Section 18 looks closely at one slip from this section, attacking the person instead of the idea, and section 19 puts claim, reasons, the other side and its answer into one persuasive paragraph. In Craft, section 25 makes naming the other side into concession, and section 26 makes answering it into rebuttal: replying to the strongest opposing point without brushing it aside. In Master, a debate's rebuttal rounds (section 34) and an essay's counter-argument paragraph (section 35) build on exactly this move.

Here is the hard case: a reply that stays on the subject and sounds like an answer, but does not touch the worry. Ishaan wants the school magazine printed in colour. The office says: "Colour costs twice as much per copy, so we could print only half as many." Ishaan's first reply: "But colour pages look much brighter and better." Run the same-point test. Is it about the magazine? Yes. About colour? Yes. About the worry - half as many copies? No. The office already knows colour looks brighter; that is why Ishaan wants it. Nothing in the reply makes the cost smaller or shows why brightness matters more than copies. It feels like an answer because it is on the same subject, but it fails the test. Ishaan's second reply: "True, but in last term's trial, 140 colour copies were all picked up in a day, while 130 of the 280 black and white copies were left on the shelf - so colour would reach about as many readers." Now run the tests again. Same point? Yes - it is about how many people the magazine reaches. Because? Yes - the count from the trial. This is a real weighing: it agrees the cost is true and shows, with a reason, why it may not matter as much as it sounds. The office may still say no. An answer is not a magic word. But only the second reply gives them something to weigh. So the fair judgement is this: a reply answers the other side only when it is about the very worry they raised and gives a reason. Being on the same subject is not enough.

The word respond comes from the Latin respondere, "to answer" or "to promise in return" - it is made of re-, "back", and spondere, "to pledge". To respond, in its oldest sense, is to give something back for what you were given. An answer has to be about what the other person actually said. The word rebut, which you will meet in Craft, comes through Old French from a verb meaning "to push back". A rebuttal pushes back on the very point that was pushed at you - not on a different one. And in the Indian tradition of formal learned debate called shastrartha, a debater first stated the opposing view, the purvapaksha, fairly and in full. Only after that view had been met did the debater give their own conclusion, the siddhanta. The order matters: name the other side, answer that very point, then conclude.

An answer does not have to win. It has to be about the same point and give a reason. The other side may still disagree, and that is allowed. Sometimes the other side is right. Then the honest answer is to change your claim - fewer days, a smaller amount, a trial first. That is not losing; it is arguing fairly. Do not invent facts for an answer. If you need a count or a time to check a point, find it or ask for it; a made-up number is worse than no number. Attacking the person is not an answer; section 18 explains why in detail. Linking words such as however, but and although belong to ch21 Transitions & Flow. Here the question is whether the answer answers.

1. Underline the other side's exact worry before you write a word of your answer.
2. Choose a move: check it, weigh it, fix it, or change your claim.
3. Check it: show with a fact or a count that the worry is not true, or smaller than it sounds.
4. Weigh it: say "true, but", then give the reason something else matters more.
5. Fix it: offer a change that removes the worry.
6. Change your claim when the other side is right about part of it.
7. Run the same-point test: is the answer about that exact worry?
8. Run the because test: does the answer give a reason?
9. Never answer by saying your claim again, louder or longer.
10. Never answer by attacking the person who raised the point.
11. Answer the point you named, not an easier one.

• From Aarav's speech to the class: "Some teachers will say a longer recess leaves less time for lessons. But the extra minutes could come from the morning line-up, so no lesson would be shorter."
• Meera says: "The music teacher says the room is needed for choir on Thursdays. Still, the chess club should meet twice a week. It really should."
• Kavya says: "Parents may say the trip is too far. Those parents just never want us to have any fun."
• Emily says: "The canteen staff say fruit spoils quickly. True - but in our class survey, 24 of 30 students said they would buy a fruit cup, so little would be left to spoil."
• Tom says: "The neighbours say the swings are too noisy at night. But the swings are perfectly safe."
• Yuki says: "The club's teacher says the robot will not be ready by the entry date. That is a fair worry, so we should enter next year's fair instead and use this year to finish the robot."

• Priya says: "Parents may say the zoo costs less. But the planetarium gives schools a discount on Tuesdays, which makes the tickets cost the same as the zoo's."
• Rohan says: "The sports teacher says pairs fall over in a three-legged race. So we could run it on the soft grass, not the track, and pair children of the same height."
• Nandini says: "The music teacher says the band rehearses in the music room on Fridays. The robotics club should get the room anyway, because robots are the future."
• Grace says: "Teachers may say a little practice each day helps spellings stick. That is true, so a five-minute spelling game each day could replace the full worksheet."
• Oliver says: "Some classmates may be allergic to fur. People who say that are just making excuses."
• Amara says: "The class teacher says nobody can feed the rabbit in the holidays. Six families have already signed up to take the rabbit home for a week each."

Feelings or facts?

Arguments persuade in two simple ways. A fact appeal gives you something someone could check: a count, a measurement, something that happened. A feeling appeal makes you feel something - excited, proud, worried, sad - so that you want to agree.

Whether a feeling appeal is fair depends on what the feeling is about. A fair feeling points at a real reason. An unfair one stands in for a reason that is not there.

This is the Support step of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge: when you ask what backs a claim, ask too whether it is a fact someone could check or a feeling, and what that feeling is really about.

A feeling appeal can be fair or unfair. Here is how to tell them apart.

Notice three things. First, a fair feeling always has a real thing under it. Take the feeling away and a reason is still standing: the bus stop is still dark at five o'clock.

Second, an unfair feeling leaves nothing behind. Take away the fear in the trainers advert and no reason about the trainers is left at all.

Third, a number does not make a line a fact appeal. "ZoomFeet make you a million times faster" has a number in it, but no one could ever check it. It is a feeling dressed up as a fact.

Picture a sailing boat. The feeling is the wind in the sail: it moves the boat, and without it the boat sits still on the water. The facts are the map and the rudder: they decide where the boat actually goes. Wind with no map can push you fast in the wrong direction. A map with no wind leaves you reading it while nothing moves. A good argument needs both: wind to move the listener, and a map to take them somewhere true.

In Practice you have built a claim with reasons, weighed strong and weak evidence, seen how adverts use bandwagon, testimonial and repetition, and named and answered the other side. This section asks what kind of support a reason is: a fact someone could check, or a feeling. Next, in Is this a fair way to argue?, you will judge one move that never answers an idea at all: attacking the person. In Craft, these two ways of persuading get their old names, together with a third way you have not met yet.

Here is a hard case: the very same feeling can be fair or unfair, depending on what is under it. Nandini wants the park's old swings repaired. Nandini's poster says: "Imagine a swing chain snapping while someone is swinging high." Is that fair? It depends on the facts. Suppose two of the chains are rusted right through, and the park keeper has already tied one swing up. Then the worry points at a real danger, and the feeling helps the reader take it seriously. Fair. Now suppose the chains were checked last week, are only scratched on the paint, and hold firm. The same sentence now paints a frightening picture that the facts do not support. Unfair - not because it uses a feeling, but because the feeling is far bigger than the danger. So you cannot judge a feeling appeal by reading it on its own. You have to ask what it is about, and then check that thing. The fair way to write the poster joins the two: "Two of the swing chains are rusted right through, and one swing is already tied up. Mending them would let everyone swing without worrying." The fact gives the reason. The feeling, worry, matches it in size. That is what to aim for in your own arguments.

Here is something surprising hidden inside two everyday words. The word emotion comes from the Latin word emovere, which means "to move out" or "to stir up". The same Latin root, movere, "to move", gives us move, motion and motive. So a feeling appeal is, by the very history of the word, an appeal that tries to move you. The word fact comes from the Latin factum, which means "a thing done". At its root, a fact is something that happened - which is exactly why someone can check it. Put them together and you have this whole section in two words: a fact is a thing done, and an emotion is a thing that moves you. A good argument tells you a thing done, and lets it move you honestly. People have thought about this for a very long time. More than two thousand years ago, the Greek thinker Aristotle wrote a book about persuasion, and in it he described speakers moving their listeners through feeling as well as through reasoning. In Craft you will learn the names he used.

A feeling appeal is not cheating just because it moves you. Judge it by what it is about and whether it is the right size. A fact appeal is not fair just because it has a number in it. The number must be one someone could actually check, and it must fit the claim. Many lines do both at once. A sad fact is still a fact, and an honest feeling about a true thing is still fair. This section is a first look. Whether a fact can support a particular claim was S12's question, and how strong a piece of evidence is was S13's. Craft gives these two appeals their full names and adds a third.

1. Read the support, not just the claim.
2. Ask: could someone check this by counting, measuring, looking or asking a person who was there?
3. If yes, call it a fact appeal; if it mainly asks you to feel or imagine, call it a feeling appeal.
4. Do not let a number fool you: a number no one could ever count is a feeling in disguise.
5. For every feeling, ask what real thing it is about.
6. Take the feeling away and see whether a reason is still standing.
7. Check that the feeling is the right size for the facts - watch for forever, everyone and never.
8. When you write, give a fact for the reason and an honest feeling for why it matters.
9. Never use the fear of being laughed at or left out in place of a reason.
10. Judge an argument by its reasons, however strongly it makes you feel.

• Priya says: "Please keep the library open at lunch. Last month, 64 students signed the lunchtime visitors' book."
• Ishaan says: "Think how hungry the class goldfish will be if nobody feeds it over the holidays. Please sign up for the feeding rota."
• The advert on Kavya's cereal box says: "BrightBean juice - the happiest drink in the world!"
• Tom says: "Our team should keep the Saturday practice. Coach Daniel timed our passing drill, and it was twice as fast after three Saturday sessions."
• From Emily's speech to the class: "The community garden gives us fresh beans every summer, and nothing feels better than eating something you grew yourself."
• Kofi says: "If we cancel sports day, every child in this school will be heartbroken forever."

• Meera says: "The bus stop needs a shelter. When it rained on Monday, the twelve children waiting there were soaked through before the bus came."
• Nandini's bake-sale poster says: "Every cupcake you buy helps the animal shelter feed the 14 dogs in its care."
• Aarav says: "Our class should read more poems aloud. I just love poems."
• The advert Grace heard says: "Don't be the only one at school without ZoomFeet trainers!"
• Oliver says: "The music room should open before school. Mrs Clarke counted 18 students waiting at the locked door on Tuesday morning."
• Lucia says: "The robotics club needs a second table. Right now eight of us share a table made for two, and on Friday our robot fell off the edge."

Is this a fair way to argue?

Every argument has two things in it: the idea, and the person who holds it. A fair reply answers the idea - its claim, its reasons, its evidence. Attacking the person means talking about the person instead, as if that settled the idea. It never does: the idea's reasons are still standing.

A point about a person's real expertise in this exact matter is fair. A point about anything else about them is not an answer.

This is the Counter step of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge: a counter-point has to answer the claim and its support, and a reply about the person answers neither.

Each unfair move has a fair move that looks a little like it. The difference is whether the point about the person touches the claim.

Notice three things. First, even the fair moves do not prove the idea wrong. Kavya not being there is a reason to go and look at the swing, not a reason to decide it is fine. A stall-holder's gain is a reason to look harder at the prices, not to call them unfair.

Second, a fair point about expertise works only so far. It makes us take Coach Daniel's plan seriously, but the plan still needs its own reasons, and a coach can still be wrong.

Third, "you do it too" may be true and still beside the point. Someone who drops litter can still be right that the playground needs more bins.

Picture a football match. The ball is the idea. A fair tackle goes for the ball: you try to win the idea by showing its reasons do not hold. A foul goes for the player: you trip them, kick their legs, shout at them. A foul can stop the player, but the referee blows the whistle, because it was not a fair way to win the ball - and the ball is still on the pitch. Attacking the person is a foul. Go for the ball - the idea - and leave the player standing.

Practice has taught you to back a claim with reasons, weigh evidence, name the other side and answer it, and tell a feeling from a fact. This section adds a test for every reply: does it answer the idea, or only attack the person? Next, in Writing a persuasive paragraph, you put all of this into one paragraph of your own. In Craft, attacking the person gets its full name and joins six other common fallacies, each one taught beside a fair argument that looks like it.

Here is a hard case: a point about a person that is fair in one argument and beside the point in another. Lucia says: "The new swing in the park is broken - the seat wobbles." Mateo replies: "Lucia wasn't even at the park this week." Is Mateo attacking the person? Look closely. Lucia's claim rests on Lucia's own report - it tells us what Lucia saw. If Lucia was not there, the report is not first-hand, and that matters. Mateo's point is about Lucia, but it touches the claim: it asks how Lucia knows. Now change one thing. Lucia says: "The swing seat wobbles - here is a video Kofi took this morning, and the park keeper has put a sign on it." Mateo replies the same: "Lucia wasn't even at the park this week." Now the point misses. The claim no longer rests on Lucia's eyes; it rests on a video and a sign anyone can check. Where Lucia was changes nothing. So you cannot judge a point about a person by its shape alone. Ask what the claim rests on. If it rests on that person's own knowledge or report, a point about their knowledge can be fair. If it rests on reasons anyone can check, the point about the person is beside the point. And even when the point is fair, it does not prove the claim false. "Lucia wasn't there" means: let's go and look. It does not mean: the swing is fine.

Here is a surprise from Latin. The name for attacking the person, which you will meet in Craft, is two Latin words: ad hominem. Ad means "to" or "toward", and hominem comes from homo, a human being. So an ad hominem argument is one aimed at the person rather than at the matter. The word argument itself comes from the Latin arguere, which meant "to make clear" or "to show". At its root, an argument is meant to make something clearer. A jab at a person does the opposite: everyone stops looking at the idea and starts looking at the person, so the idea gets harder to see. There is an old piece of sports advice that says the same thing: play the ball, not the player. And the Indian tradition of formal learned debate, shastrartha, asked a debater first to state the opposing view fairly and in full - the purvapaksha - before giving their own conclusion. A rule like that keeps everyone's eyes on the idea, because you cannot answer a view you have not first stated properly.

A point about a person is fair when it touches the claim: their real expertise in this exact matter, or whether they saw what they report. Even then it is a reason to check, not proof. Noticing that someone gains from an idea is a reason to look harder at their evidence. It is never, by itself, a reason to call the idea wrong. Disagreeing strongly with an idea is fair. Kind words do not make an argument right, and firm words about an idea do not make it unfair. This section judges attacks on the person only. Bandwagon and repetition were S14's; Craft names seven common fallacies in full, each paired with a fair argument that looks like it.

1. Find the idea first: what exactly is being claimed, and for what reasons?
2. Read each reply and ask whether it is about the idea or about the person.
3. Use the cover-the-name test: hide the person's name and see what is left.
4. Do not drop a good idea because of who said it.
5. Do not accept a weak idea because you like who said it.
6. Treat real expertise in this exact matter as a fair point - and still check the reasons.
7. Treat "they weren't there" as a reason to go and check, not as proof.
8. Answer "you do it too" by going back to the idea.
9. When someone attacks you, steer back calmly: "Let's look at the reasons."
10. Disagree firmly with ideas, and never use a jab at the person as your reason.

• Farhan says: "Meera's idea for a plant stall at the bake sale is silly - Meera can't even keep a cactus alive."
• Priya says: "Coach Daniel has trained our team for ten years, so the new warm-up plan deserves a fair try."
• Rohan says: "You're only in Class 3, Ishaan, so your idea about the swings doesn't count."
• Hannah says: "Your plan for the class trip has the bus leaving at 8, but the museum doesn't open until 10."
• Jack says: "Emily wants more bins in the playground, but Emily dropped a wrapper yesterday, so forget it."
• Amara says: "Yuki wasn't at the match, so let's check the score sheet before we believe Yuki's report of the final score."

• Kavya says: "Aarav only wants a longer recess because Aarav is lazy."
• Nandini says: "The canteen manager, Mr Rao, gains if we buy the new snacks, so let's compare the prices with the shop across the road before we agree they are fair."
• Dev says: "Your idea to start a robotics club is great, Tenzin, but there's no room free after school on any day this term."
• Oliver says: "Don't listen to Grace about the reading club - Grace's spelling is terrible."
• Ruby says: "The school nurse, Mrs D'Souza, sees every playground injury, and she says most of them happen on the wet steps by the hall."
• Mateo says: "Kofi's poster for the science fair can't be right - Kofi supports the other football team."

Writing a persuasive paragraph

A persuasive paragraph has one job: to move a reader from not sure to convinced, with reasons they can check. It does that with a point, real support and a link back.

Look along the right-hand column. Each sentence sits in the right place, so the shape looks finished. But the point is too vague to agree or disagree with, the support is an opinion with "everyone knows" in front of it, the middle fact is true but about something else, and the ending claims far more than anything above it showed.

Each part answers one question of the Argument Check: the point is the Claim, the support answers Support, the sentence that joins them is the Warrant, and a line on the other side, if you add one, is the Counter - then judge whether the link back has been earned.

A paragraph can have the right shape at four different strengths. Here is one point, "Sports day should be held in the morning", with four different middles.

Notice three things.

First, the point never changed. Only the middle did, and the paragraph got stronger at every step. Persuading is done in the middle.

Second, the sentence at level 3 is the one writers most often leave out. You know why eleven children feeling faint matters to the timing; the reader may not join the two until you say "mornings are cooler". In Craft, S23 gives that joining step its proper name, the warrant.

Third, the other-side line at level 4 does not weaken the paragraph. A parent reading level 3 would think "but I cannot come in the morning" and stop listening. Level 4 has already heard them and answered (S15 and S16).

Picture your reader standing on one bank of a river, and your point on the far bank. Saying the point again, louder, is only pointing across the water: the reader can see the far bank but still cannot get there. Each piece of real support is a plank laid across. The sentence that says why it fits is the nail that fixes the plank at both ends - without it, the plank wobbles and the reader will not step on it. The link back is the reader stepping off on the far side and looking back at the planks that carried them. A paragraph persuades when the reader has walked across, not when they have been called to from the other side.

In S11 you gave a claim two or three reasons. In S12 and S13 you checked whether a reason was real support, and how strong it was. S15 and S16 added the other side and an answer to it, and S17 and S18 asked whether a feeling or an attack on a person was doing the work instead of a reason. This section puts those pieces into one paragraph: a point, real support, why it fits, and a link back. S20 asks you to explain every judgement like this one. In Craft, S23 names the joining step - the warrant - and in Master, S35 grows the paragraph into an argumentative essay's outline.

Here is a hard case: two paragraphs with the same point, where the one with more reasons is weaker. The point: "The school magazine should come out every month instead of every term." Paragraph X: "Everyone in my class wants it monthly. My cousin's school has a monthly magazine. It would be more fun. So it should come out every month." Paragraph Y: "Last term, eight of the stories sent in were about events that were already six weeks old when the magazine came out. A monthly magazine would print them while they are still news. So a monthly issue would keep the school's news new." Counting says X wins: three reasons against one. Now run the check on each reason. "Everyone in my class wants it" tells us people would like it, not that it would work, and "everyone" has not been counted. "My cousin's school has one" is a single example from somewhere else, and it does not say whether it went well. "It would be more fun" is an opinion. Y has one fact a reader could check, a sentence saying why it fits, and a link back that claims only what was shown. Y is the stronger paragraph. But do not stop there. Y is not finished either. A reader on the magazine team would say: "Monthly means three times the work for four editors." Y is silent about that. A fair judgement is this: Y is stronger than X, and Y would be stronger still with one line that names the extra work and answers it - for example, "a new Class 7 team has offered to share the editing." And X is not worthless. "My class wants it" could become real support for a different point - "students would read a monthly magazine" - if someone actually counted. So the lesson is not "fewer reasons are better". It is: count the support that holds up, not the number of sentences.

The word persuade comes from the Latin suadere, which means to advise or to urge. So persuading, at its root, is advising: giving someone reasons to choose, not pushing them into it. The word paragraph is older still. It comes from the Greek paragraphos, from para, beside, and graphein, to write. In old Greek manuscripts a paragraphos was a short stroke written in the margin, beside the line where a new part began. The mark came first; the name for the block of writing grew out of it. And more than two thousand years ago, in his Rhetoric, the Greek thinker Aristotle named three ways a speaker can persuade: through their own character and credibility, which he called ethos; through the feelings they stir, pathos; and through the reasons and facts they give, logos. A paragraph whose middle holds real support is leaning on logos. You will meet all three properly in Craft, in S24, and see how a fair paragraph often blends more than one.

This section judges what is inside a persuasive paragraph. How the sentences are ordered, how long the paragraph should be and where the point sits belong to ch27 Paragraph Architecture. Linking words such as so, because and however are ch21's as words; here they matter only for what they join. A point at the start is common, but it is not a law. Some writers build the support first and land the point at the end. Either works if the support is real. The other-side line is optional in a short paragraph. Leaving it out is not a slip; ignoring a point every reader will think of is a weakness. Feeling is allowed. A paragraph may say why something matters to people, as long as feeling is not the only thing it offers (S17).

1. Write the point as one sentence a reader could agree or disagree with.
2. Under it, write support a reader could check: a count, something you saw, someone who knows this subject.
3. Read every middle sentence and ask: is this a reason, or the point again?
4. Cut or replace any sentence that only repeats the point.
5. Check that each piece of support is about this point, not just true.
6. Add one sentence that says why the support fits the point.
7. If there is an objection every reader will think of, name it fairly and answer it in one sentence.
8. Make the link back say what the support has shown, not just repeat the first sentence.
9. Keep the link back no bigger than the support: no new claims, no "ever" or "everyone" you have not shown.
10. Read it once as the person who disagrees: where would they still ask "why?"

• Aarav's paragraph begins: Our school should open the library at lunch.
• Meera's support sentence: In Class 6B's survey, 24 of 31 students said they have nowhere quiet to read at lunch.
• Kavya adds: The library matters here because it is the one room in school where nobody is allowed to shout across the tables.
• Tom's middle says: Opening the library is a good idea, a great idea, the best idea ever!
• Emily writes: Some people worry the librarian needs a lunch break, but a rota of Class 8 helpers could cover two lunchtimes a week.
• Kofi's link back: So opening the library at lunch, even on two days, would give those readers the quiet place they are missing.

• Rohan wrote: The bus stop outside school needs a shelter, because the Class 3 children wait there for twenty minutes in all weathers.
• Priya's support sentence: The chess club should meet twice a week because chess is really, truly great.
• Ishaan's middle: The new swings would be safer, and the park's railings were painted green last spring.
• Grace's link back: So we should keep the music room open after school, and also buy a new piano and build a stage.
• Oliver's support: Coach Daniel, who has trained the team for ten years, says a ten-minute warm-up cuts down pulled muscles.
• Yuki's paragraph: Our class garden should grow beans. Beans grew well in last term's trial bed, and they are ready in eight weeks, before the summer break. So beans would give us a harvest while we are still here to pick it.

Explain your evidence

To explain a judgement, say what the Argument Check found. Each section of Practice has its own kind of evidence.

The four questions are always the same - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - and the evidence for any judgement is simply the step where the answer came out, and what that answer was.

A good explanation has four parts, and each one can be checked.

For a sound argument, the evidence is the steps that held: "Claim clear; support a class count; it fits a claim about what the class wants; no obvious worry ignored."

Notice three things.

First, part 3 always says "for this claim". A count, an expert, a feeling and a blunt reply can each be fair or unfair. A count of the class fits a claim about what the class wants, but not a claim that chess is the best game. Coach Daniel fits a claim about warm-ups, but not one about cereal.

Second, some reasons look like evidence but are not: "it sounds like a trick", "it has a number in it", "it mentions somebody famous", "it makes me feel something". The first is a feeling, and the others name a shape, not what the shape is doing.

Third, a fairer version is the quickest test of your own explanation. If you cannot say what would make the argument hold, you may not yet know why it fails.

Picture a judge at a science fair, walking from table to table with a pile of cards. A judge who writes "not good" on a card helps nobody, even when the judge is right. A good judge writes four things on each card: what I checked, what I found, why it matters, and what would make it better. The student can go back to the table, look at the same thing and see it too. Your evidence is that card. A label is a judge who only writes the score.

Practice has given you the Argument Check with a name for most of what it finds: a claim with two or three reasons, an opinion dressed as support, strong and weak evidence, bandwagon, testimonial and repetition, the other side named and answered, feeling and fact, attacking the person, and the persuasive paragraph - plus the answer "sound". Craft builds on every one of them. It begins with the claim itself: S21 asks what makes a claim worth arguing - clear, specific and genuinely debatable.

Here is the hard case: two explanations that reach the same verdict, where only one of them is evidence. "Pop singer Rina Star loves ZoomFeet trainers, so they must be the best trainers for running." Explanation 1: weak, because famous people cannot be trusted. Explanation 2: weak, because Rina Star is famous for singing, not for knowing about running shoes. Her liking them does not fit a claim about running - a testimonial. A fairer version would give a test of how the trainers grip or last. Both say weak. But test them on a changed case. "Lucia Ramos, who has run the town marathon for twelve years and tests trainers for the running club, says ZoomFeet grip well on wet tracks." Explanation 1 rejects this too: Lucia is well known in the town, and "famous people cannot be trusted." That is backwards. Lucia knows exactly this subject, and the claim is narrow - grip on wet tracks - so her support fits. Explanation 2 still works: ask whether the person's knowledge fits the claim. Here it does, so this is strong support, not a testimonial trick. A careful judge would still ask one more question - is she being paid to say it? - because that would weaken it. So a reason is evidence only when it names what actually decides - here, whether the person's knowledge fits the claim - and would decide the next case correctly too. It is fine to find this hard: the same shape, a well-known person saying they like something, can be weak in one sentence and strong in the next.

The word evidence comes from the Latin evidens, meaning clear or plain to see. It is built from videre, to see - the same root as video and vision. Evidence is, at its root, something you can point to so that someone else can see it too. The word argument has a similar story. It comes from the Latin arguere, which meant to make clear or to show. An argument was first a way of making something plain. And in India, the Nyaya tradition of logic set out an argument in five steps, so that every part could be checked. Its classic example runs: the hill has fire; because it has smoke; wherever there is smoke there is fire, as in a kitchen; this hill has such smoke; so the hill has fire. Notice the third step. Nyaya did not let a reason stand alone - it asked for the general rule that joins the reason to the claim, with an example everyone could check. That is exactly what part 3 of your explanation does.

This section asks for evidence across Practice (S11-S19). It adds no new moves; each one stays in its own section. Fair moves stay fair. A count fits a claim about what people want, an expert fits a claim about their own subject, a feeling is fair when it rests on a fact, and a blunt reply is fair when it answers the idea. The full names for faulty reasoning - ad hominem, straw man, false cause, hasty generalisation, slippery slope, false dilemma - are Craft's, in S27 and S28. In Practice, saying "attacking the person" or "putting the other side unfairly" is complete evidence. How a sentence sounds belongs to ch28 Voice & Style, and whether a word is loaded to ch22 Tone & Register; here the question is only whether the reasoning holds.

1. Name the exact sentence or phrase that does the work.
2. Name the step that caught it: Claim, Support, Warrant or Counter.
3. Name the move in a few words: an echo, weak evidence, bandwagon, testimonial, repetition, the other side ignored, attacking the person.
4. Say why it fails or holds for this claim, not in general.
5. Give a fairer version that would make it hold.
6. For a sound argument, list the steps that held.
7. Never name a move from its shape alone: a number, a famous name or a feeling can be fair.
8. Reject labels and feelings as reasons: "it is a trick" and "it feels unfair" are not evidence.
9. Check that your reason would still work if the claim changed.
10. Judge the argument, not whether you agree with its claim.

• Farhan says: We should have a class quiz on Fridays, because quizzes help us remember what we learned that week.
• Nandini reads the poster aloud: Join the 9,000 families who already drink BrightBean juice!
• Rohan says: Don't listen to Dev's plan for the bake sale - Dev is only in Class 3.
• Emily argues: My friend got faster at times tables with extra homework, so every class should get double homework.
• From Jack's speech to the class: Think how lonely the goldfish will be over the holidays, all by itself in a dark classroom!
• Amara says: In our class vote, 21 of 30 chose Friday, so our chess club should meet on Fridays.

• Ishaan says: Some people say the hall is booked on Mondays, but I still think the hall is best.
• The Crunchos box Priya brought in says: Pop singer Rina Star says Crunchos is the healthiest cereal!
• Kavya writes: People who want a longer lunch just want to be lazy.
• Lily answers: Some worry the goldfish will be alone in the holidays; the Shah family has offered to take it home.
• Ben's paragraph: The library should open at lunch. It is a great idea. It is the best idea. So it should open!
• Kenji says: Coach Daniel, who has trained our team for ten years, says our passing breaks down when we are tired.

Writing with intent · ages 12–16

Building a claim worth arguing

A claim is the sentence an argument sets out to prove. Before you look for any evidence, test the claim itself. A claim worth arguing is clear (a reader can say what you want), specific (it names who, what, and when or how much) and debatable (a fair-minded person could sincerely disagree, and no quick check settles it).

This is the first question of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - and every later question leans on it: you cannot weigh support, test a warrant or answer a counter until you know exactly what is being argued.

Claims come in three common kinds, and each one becomes worth arguing in its own way.

Notice three things. First, a claim of fact can be worth arguing - but only while the evidence is open. Once the prefects have timed the queue for a month and everyone accepts the times, the claim stops being an argument and becomes a report. The argument moves on to what should follow from it.

Second, a claim of value is not the same as a taste. 'Chess is more fun' rests on what you enjoy, and the only answer to it is 'Not for me.' 'Chess is the better use of the hour' invites reasons - how many students take part, what it costs, what they practise - that someone else can weigh and answer.

Third, every claim worth arguing passes the rival test: you can write one honest sentence that a fair person on the other side would say. If the only rival sentence you can write is 'No, it isn't' or 'I just like something else', the claim is not ready yet. If you cannot write a rival sentence at all, the claim is either settled or something nobody denies.

Picture an archery target. A broad claim is an arrow aimed at the whole field: it cannot miss, but it can never score. A vague claim is a target with no rings painted on it, so nobody can say where the centre is. A settled fact is an arrow already standing in the bullseye; there is nothing left to shoot at. A claim worth arguing is a painted target at a fair distance - clear rings, one definite centre, and a real chance of missing. Only then can evidence be fired at it and scored.

Practice taught you to give a claim two or three reasons and to name the other side. Craft starts one step earlier, with the claim itself, because every later section needs a claim it can test. Next comes the evidence a claim can lean on - fact, statistic, expert, example - and then the warrant that links evidence to claim. By S30 you will set how strongly to state the claim, and in Master you will judge whole arguments and outline an essay around one thesis, which is this section's claim grown up.

Here is the hard case: a claim that can be checked, but has not been checked yet. Kavya tells the school council: 'The new one-way system at the main gate has made the morning queue shorter.' Run the tests. Clear? Yes - one gate, one queue, one change. Specific? Yes - the main gate, in the mornings, since the new system began. Debatable? This is where it gets hard. The claim can be checked with a stopwatch, so it feels like a fact, and facts are not worth arguing. But nobody has timed it. The head of year thinks the queue is shorter; Class 9 says it is longer on rainy days, when everyone arrives at once. Until someone measures it, fair people disagree, and the claim is worth arguing. Kavya's best move is to say how she would settle it: 'Let the prefects time the queue for ten mornings.' Now suppose they do, and the times show the queue is four minutes shorter on dry days and the same on wet ones. The claim is now settled - a report, not an argument. The debate does not end; it moves. The new claim worth arguing is: 'The one-way system should stay all year.' Someone can fairly answer that the students who live east of the school now walk an extra five minutes. So the fair judgement is this. 'Can be checked' and 'has been settled' are not the same. A checkable claim is worth arguing while the check has not been made or its result is disputed. Once it is settled, argue what should follow from it. Debatable never means 'nobody can know'; it means a reasonable person, on the evidence we have now, could hold the other side.

The word claim comes from the Latin clamare, 'to cry out' or 'to shout'. The same root gives us clamour and exclaim. So a claim began life as a shout - and this section asks you to do the opposite: to make your claim quiet, exact and narrow enough to be tested. The word debate comes, through Old French, from a word meaning 'to beat' or 'to fight'. A debate was once a fight. What turns a fight into a debate is a claim both sides can see clearly, so they argue about the same thing. And the Nyaya tradition of Indian logic, which set out an argument in five steps, begins with the pratijna - the proposition. Its classic example does not claim that hills have fire. It claims that this hill has fire, because this hill has smoke. The first step names one place and one thing. Even the oldest models of an argument start with a claim that is specific enough to check against its reason.

Specific is not the same as tiny. 'The canteen should sell exactly 37 bananas on Tuesdays' is specific, but no reason could support the number 37 over 36. Make the claim as specific as your evidence can reach, and no further. Debatable does not mean upsetting or controversial. Practise on low-stakes claims - a club, a timetable, a park - where fair people really can land on either side. A taste is fine to hold and to say; it is just argued poorly. 'I like green' needs no defence. It becomes a claim worth arguing only when it is tied to reasons others can weigh. How strongly to state a claim - might, should, must - is S30's question. Cutting a claim's extra words for length is ch20 Conciseness, and the shape of the sentence that opens a paragraph is ch27 Paragraph Architecture. This section asks only whether the claim is worth arguing at all.

1. Write the claim as one sentence before you look for any evidence.
2. Test clear: could a reader say exactly what you are asking for?
3. Replace vague words such as better, improve and fairer with what you actually mean.
4. Test specific: name who, what, and when or how much.
5. Make the claim as specific as your evidence can reach, and no further.
6. Test debatable: write the rival sentence a fair person on the other side would say.
7. If a quick check settles it, argue what should follow from the fact instead.
8. If nobody could deny it, sharpen it until someone sincerely could.
9. Take a side; a sentence that reports both sides is not yet a claim.
10. Keep to one claim at a time, and give each claim its own evidence.

• From Meera's proposal to the school council: The library should stay open until 5 pm on weekdays, because the after-school bus leaves at 5.15.
• Rohan says: Homework is bad.
• From Priya's notice: The canteen closes at 2.30 pm.
• Tom says: Blue is just a nicer colour than red.
• From Hannah's speech: The new bike racks might be the reason fewer bikes are left on the pavement.
• From Kofi's speech to the robotics club: We should enter the regional contest this year, because our robot has already passed all six practice runs.

• Aarav says: Sport is good for everyone.
• From Nandini's speech: House points should count attendance at clubs as well as sports wins, because students who never win a race still work hard for their house.
• Farhan says: Some students want a longer recess and some do not.
• Emily says: Nobody should get hurt on the park swings.
• Oliver's notice: The chess club should move to the music room and the bake sale should double its prices.
• From Yuki's proposal: Each class should look after its own bed in the community garden this spring, because the shared beds were left unwatered over the long weekend.

Types of evidence

Evidence is whatever a claim leans on to show it is true. Most evidence is one of four types, and each type is strong in one way and limited in another.

This is the second question of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge: what evidence backs the claim, and how strong is it for this claim? The third question, whether the evidence really connects to the claim, is the next section's.

The type of evidence you need depends on the kind of claim you made.

Notice three things. First, type is not the same as quality. A statistic from all 52 bus students is strong; a statistic from four friends is weak, though both are numbers. An expert in their own field is strong; the same person outside it is not.

Second, the strongest arguments usually combine types, so that each covers another's limit. The count shows how common the problem is. The example makes it real. The expert explains why it matters. The fact pins it to one place.

Third, good evidence does not finish the job. Even a perfect statistic has to be connected to the claim by a reason - why does waiting in the rain mean the stop needs a shelter, rather than that the bus should come on time? That connecting step is the warrant, and it is the next section.

Picture a bridge held up by four kinds of pillar. A fact is a short stone pillar: solid, but it holds up only the piece of road directly above it. A statistic is a long row of pillars: it can carry a wide span, but only if every one was set on firm ground. An expert is a steel pillar: very strong, but only where it was designed to stand. An example is a single bright post: it shows where the road goes, but it cannot hold up a whole span alone. The safest bridge uses more than one kind.

In Practice, S13 told strong evidence from weak: a statistic or an expert against 'everyone says so' or one friend's story. Craft names the four types and gives each a strength and a limit, so that 'strong' always means 'strong for this claim'. S21 gave you a claim worth arguing; this section gives it support. S23 then asks the question evidence cannot answer by itself - why does this evidence support this claim? - and S28 returns to the story stretched into a pattern as a named fallacy. In Master, S33 asks whether the source of the evidence has its own reasons to tilt it.

Here is a hard case: three kinds of evidence for one claim, pointing different ways. Ananya claims: 'The canteen should sell fruit at morning break.' She brings a statistic: in her survey of Class 7, 31 of 40 students said they would buy fruit if it were on sale. Mr Fernandes, who has run the canteen for nine years, replies with his own experience: 'We tried fruit two years ago and threw most of it away.' And Tom adds an example: 'My sister's school sells fruit and it always sells out.' Which is strongest? Take each in turn. Ananya's statistic covers a fair group - a whole class - but it counts what students say they would do, not what they did. People often say yes to a good idea and then buy crisps. Mr Fernandes is an expert in his own field: what this canteen sells. His evidence is about real behaviour, not intentions. But it is two years old, and the fruit then was whole apples at full price. Conditions may have changed. Tom's example is real but from another school, with different students, prices and break times. It shows fruit can sell. It cannot show it will sell here. So the fair judgement is not 'the number wins' or 'the expert wins'. Each type has carried exactly what it can: interest (the survey), a past failure under different conditions (the expert), and a possibility (the example). None of them settles the claim. The strongest next step is new evidence of the type the claim really needs - a record of what students buy - from a two-week trial of cut fruit at a low price. Weighing evidence means asking what each type can carry, not counting which side has more of it.

The word evidence comes from the Latin evidens, 'obvious' or 'clearly seen', built on videre, 'to see'. Evidence is what lets someone else see what you see. If your reader cannot check it or picture it, it is not yet doing its job. The word anecdote comes from a Greek word meaning 'things not published'. An anecdote was once a private story that had never been written down for the public. It still carries that sense: personal, unchecked, one person's account. And the word statistics came into English through German, from a Latin phrase about the affairs of the state. It first meant collecting facts about a country - its people, its land, its trade - in numbers. The Nyaya tradition of Indian logic saw the limit of a single example long ago. In its five-step argument, the example is never offered alone. 'As in a kitchen' comes with a general rule: wherever there is smoke, there is fire. The kitchen is evidence only because it shows the rule at work. One case, on its own, proves very little; one case that shows a rule can carry a great deal.

The four types overlap at the edges. A statistic is a kind of fact - a counted one - and an expert often cites facts and examples. Name the type by what the evidence mainly does: counts many cases, reports one checkable thing, gives a trained judgement, or tells one case. Weak is not the same as worthless. A single example is weak support for 'most', but it is exactly right for 'it can happen', and it can make a statistic easier to picture. Every number in this section belongs to an invented school scene. Never present a number as a fact about the real world unless you know who counted it and how. Whether the evidence actually connects to the claim is the warrant, S23. Whether a source has reasons to lean one way is S33. A story that persuades through feeling is pathos, S24. This section names the type and weighs what it can carry.

1. For every piece of support, name its type first: fact, statistic, expert or example.
2. Ask what kind of claim it has to carry: most, can happen, specialist, this thing, or should.
3. For a fact, check that it is about the same thing the claim is about.
4. For a fact, ask what other facts were left out.
5. For a statistic, ask who was counted and how many.
6. For a statistic, ask what it is compared with - last term, another class, the whole school.
7. For an expert, check that they speak inside their own field.
8. For an example, use it to show something can happen, or to make a number real - never to prove most.
9. Combine types so that each covers another's limit.
10. When the evidence you have cannot carry the claim, gather the type that can - or narrow the claim.

• From Meera's proposal: The stop needs a shelter, because in Class 8's survey, 41 of the 52 students who take the bus said they had waited in the rain at least once this month.
• Rohan says: My cousin's school has a shelter, and nobody there ever gets wet.
• From Kavya's speech to the team: Coach Daniel, who has trained the team for ten years, says players need a rest day between two matches.
• Tom says: Mr Hughes, our maths teacher, says the new ZoomFeet boots are the best for football.
• From Grace's letter: The bus stop has no roof and stands on open ground beside the playing field.
• Kofi says: Three of the four friends I asked want a longer recess, so most students do.

• From Aarav's proposal: The library's own records show 340 books were borrowed in the week it stayed open late, against 210 in an ordinary week.
• From Nandini's speech: Last Tuesday, Dev waited forty minutes for a computer in the lab and went home without finishing his project.
• From Ishaan's notice: Mr Pillai, who has run the community garden for twelve years, says the tomato beds need watering every day in May.
• Emily says: Our survey of the ten people in the queue for second helpings found that nine want a longer lunch.
• From Oliver's report: The pitch was waterlogged on six of the last eight match days.
• From Lucia's poster: ZoomFeet trainers are worn by the captain of the city running club, so they will make you faster.

The hidden step: the warrant

Every argument that gives evidence also leans on a warrant: the general rule that explains why this evidence supports this claim. The evidence is specific - it is about this library, this team, this week. The warrant is general - it would apply to any case like this one. Most of the time nobody says the warrant aloud, which is why it is called the hidden step.

This is step three of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge: once you know what is claimed and what backs it, ask why that support actually supports this claim, and whether the step is real or only assumed.

A warrant can be tested, and the tests come in a fixed order.

Notice three things.

First, a warrant is general and evidence is specific. "Nine members wait while two play" is about this club. "A club should let its members take part" is about any club. If your "warrant" names this case, you have probably restated the evidence.

Second, one piece of evidence can support different claims through different warrants. "The library is nearly empty after 4 pm" supports "close at 4" only through the rule that unused rooms should close. Through a different rule - an empty room may mean students cannot get there - it supports "find out why", perhaps because the last bus leaves at 4:10. Stating the warrant shows which road you chose.

Third, a warrant can have support of its own, called backing. If a reader doubts that clubs should meet when most members are free, you can back the rule: last term, a Tuesday slot left the club with four members out of eleven. Backing is evidence for the warrant, not for the claim.

Picture a river. On one bank stands your evidence; on the far bank stands your claim. The warrant is the bridge between them. Both banks can be solid ground - true facts, a clear claim - and the reader can still fall in the water if the bridge is missing or rotten. Backing is the pillars under the bridge: when a reader doubts the crossing, you show them what holds it up. Testing an argument means walking onto the bridge before you trust it.

In S21 you built a claim worth arguing, and in S22 you weighed the types of evidence that can back it. This section adds the step that joins them. Next, S24 asks how an argument persuades - through credibility, feeling and reasoning - and S25 and S26 add the other side. In S27 and S28 you will find that many fallacies are broken warrants in disguise: a false cause leans on "whatever came first caused it", a hasty generalisation on "what is true of one is true of all". In Master, S31 judges whole arguments warrant by warrant, and S35 asks that every reason in an essay outline carries its evidence and its warrant.

Here is a hard case, because nothing in it is a fallacy. Farhan says: "Sports day should include a fun run that is not timed, because last year eleven students sat out every race." The evidence is a count, and nobody disputes it. Now say the warrant: sports day should be an event every student can take part in. Many readers accept that at once. But Hannah replies: "Sports day is for celebrating the fastest and strongest. If some students do not want to race, that is their choice." Hannah does not deny the eleven students. She holds a different warrant: sports day exists to reward athletic achievement. So who is right? Run the tests. Both rules can be said plainly. Both are true in general for some events - a school can hold a festival for everyone or a contest for the best. Neither has an obvious exception here. The disagreement is not about facts at all. It is about what sports day is for. The fair judgement is this: Farhan's argument is sound if you accept its warrant, and it is not refuted by Hannah, only challenged. To persuade Hannah, Farhan must do more than repeat the count. He must back his warrant - for example, the school's own description of sports day as a day for every house - or show that a fun run takes nothing from the races Hannah values. When two people agree on the evidence and still disagree, look for the warrant. That is usually where the real argument is.

The word warrant has an unexpected twin. It reached English from Old North French warant, a form of the word that elsewhere in French was garant: a protector, someone who stands behind a promise. English later borrowed the same family again through garant, and that is where guarantee comes from. Warrant and guarantee began as one word. A warrant in an argument is exactly that: the guarantee that the evidence really licenses the claim. The same split between w and g shows up in other English pairs that came through French: ward and guard, warden and guardian. And the idea is far older than the word. In the Nyaya tradition of Indian logic, a full argument has five steps. The proposition: the hill has fire. The reason: because it has smoke. Then the step called udaharana, the example with its general rule: wherever there is smoke, there is fire, as in a kitchen. Then applying it: this hill has such smoke. Then the conclusion: so the hill has fire. Look at the third step. The Nyaya form refuses to let the warrant stay hidden. It must be said as a general rule, and it must be backed with an example everyone has seen.

A hidden warrant is not a mistake. Most everyday arguments leave it unstated because speaker and listener share it; state it when your reader might not. A warrant can be true in general and still fail in one case, so test it on this case, not only in the abstract. When two people agree on the evidence and still disagree, the dispute is often about the warrant, and often about values. That is a real disagreement to argue out with backing, not a fallacy to be named. This section names a broken warrant but does not yet label the fallacies built on one; S27 and S28 do that. The point-evidence-explain shape of a paragraph belongs to ch27 Paragraph Architecture; this section asks only whether the explaining step is true.

1. Find the claim first, then the evidence, before you look for the warrant.
2. Write the warrant as one general sentence beginning "Whenever..." or "If..., then...".
3. Check that your warrant does not just repeat the evidence or the claim.
4. Make the warrant general enough to try on another case.
5. Ask whether most fair readers would accept the rule in other cases too.
6. Look for an exception: does this case break the general rule?
7. Test the rule on the other side - would you accept it if it helped a claim you dislike?
8. State the warrant outright when your reader might not share it.
9. Give backing - evidence for the warrant itself - when a reader doubts the rule.
10. When the warrant fails, either change the claim to fit the evidence or find evidence that fits the claim.

• From Meera's letter to the head teacher: "The bus stop outside the gate needs a shelter, because students wait there in the rain for up to twenty minutes, and anyone made to wait outdoors in bad weather should have cover."
• Rohan says: "Pasta should be on the menu every day, because it is the most expensive dish the canteen makes."
• Ishaan says: "The chess club needs a second set, because nine members wait while two play, and a club should let its members actually play."
• Emily says: "Our team should get the new kit first, because we won the league last season."
• From Tom's notice for the class: "Bring a water bottle on Sports Day, because the forecast says 32 degrees."
• Lucia says: "The reading club should meet on Thursdays, because eight of our eleven members have football on Tuesdays, and a club should meet when most of its members are free."

• Priya says: "The library should close at 4 pm, because it is almost empty after 4."
• Farhan says: "The science fair should allow pairs, because last year six students dropped out when they had to work alone, and the fair is meant to get as many students as possible showing their work."
• Aarav says: "The new spin bowler is the reason we keep winning, because we started winning the week she joined."
• Grace says: "The music room should be open at lunch, because the band has a concert in three weeks and has had only two rehearsals, and a group preparing for a performance needs time to practise."
• Oliver says: "Everyone in Year 8 loves the new timetable, because Jack told me it was great."
• Kofi says: "The Park Lane swings should be closed until they are repaired, because two of the chains are rusted through, and rusted chains can snap under a child's weight."

Ethos, pathos, logos

An argument can persuade in three ways, and the names come from ancient Greek. Ethos persuades through the speaker's credibility: experience, expertise, honesty, fairness. Pathos persuades through what the listener feels: hope, worry, pride, sympathy. Logos persuades through facts and reasoning: numbers, examples, causes, steps that follow.

In the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - the appeals belong to Support and to the final judgement: ask what is doing the persuading, and whether it is a real reason or something standing in for one.

Real passages rarely use one appeal at a time. Here is Hannah, arguing that her class should keep the new timetable.

Notice three things.

First, one sentence can carry two appeals. "Nobody learns well on an empty stomach" is a reason, and it also makes the listener feel the afternoon slump. Name both, then ask which is carrying the weight.

Second, ethos can be borrowed. When Ishaan says "Coach Daniel, who has trained our team for ten years, says three practices a week is the most young players can recover from", he borrows the coach's credibility. That is fair, because the coach knows about training. If a well-known quiz-show host said the same thing, the borrowed ethos would be worth nothing, because fame in one field is not knowledge in another.

Third, logos can be misused as easily as pathos. "The new menu is a hit - on pizza Friday, sales doubled" uses a real number, but one chosen from the best day of the week. A number is only as fair as the choice of which number to show.

Picture a three-legged stool. One leg is ethos, one is pathos, one is logos. A stool with all three legs can hold your weight; take one away and it tips. The legs need not be identical - for a reader who already trusts you, the ethos leg can be short; for a doubtful reader, the logos leg must be thick. But a stool on one leg, however strong that leg is, is a balancing trick, not a seat.

In Practice, S17 gave you a first look at persuading through feelings or through facts. Craft has since built the logos side: a claim worth arguing in S21, the types of evidence in S22 and the warrant in S23. This section names all three appeals and adds ethos. Next, S25 and S26 show that conceding the other side's strongest point fairly is itself a source of ethos. S29 judges loaded words, a common tool of pathos. In Master, S32 judges figures that persuade, S36 runs the appeals across speeches, editorials, adverts and posts, and S37 and S39 study real public-domain speeches appeal by appeal.

Here is a hard case, because the labels overlap. Ishaan is arguing that the old playground should be resurfaced. He says: "Mrs D'Souza, our school nurse, treated fourteen scraped knees from the old playground last term." Which appeal is that? Try each question. Who is speaking? Ishaan, but he is borrowing Mrs D'Souza's standing. A school nurse is exactly the person who would know how many children were hurt. That is ethos, borrowed and relevant. What does it show to be true? Fourteen injuries in one term from one surface. That is a checkable count - logos. What does it make you feel? A little: scraped knees are a picture anyone can imagine. There is a trace of pathos, though it is not doing much of the work. So the fair answer is not one label. It is: logos, made credible by borrowed ethos, with a touch of pathos. If you had to pick one, ask what the sentence needs from this listener. A listener who doubts the number will lean on who reported it; a listener who trusts the source will lean on the number itself. Now change one thing. "A famous quiz-show host says the old playground is dangerous." The shape is the same - someone else's words, borrowed. But the host has no knowledge of this playground, and there is no count at all. The ethos is borrowed from the wrong place, and nothing is left underneath it. The appeals are a lens for seeing how an argument works, not boxes every sentence must fit into exactly one of. Use them to ask what is doing the persuading, and whether it deserves to.

The three names are more than two thousand years old. Aristotle's Rhetoric, written in Greece in the 4th century BCE, set out three kinds of proof a speaker can supply through a speech: one lies in the character of the speaker, one in putting the listener into a certain frame of mind, and one in the speech itself, in what it proves or seems to prove. Aristotle's Greek words for them are the names we still use: ethos, pathos, logos. Aristotle added a point that still surprises people. He held that the trust a speaker earns should come from what is said in the speech itself, not from what the audience already thought of the speaker before it began. Ethos, for him, was something you build as you argue. The Greek words live on in English. Ethos meant character, and it gives us ethics. Pathos meant suffering or what one feels, and it gives us sympathy and empathy; pathetic once meant moving the feelings, before it came to mean feeble. Logos meant word, reason or account, and it gives us logic, and the ending -logy in biology and geology, the accounts of life and of the earth.

The three appeals often overlap, and one sentence can carry two. Label the main one, but do not force every sentence into exactly one box. No appeal is the honest one. Each can be fair, and each can stand in for a reason; judge the use, not the label. Borrowed ethos - quoting someone else - counts only when that person's knowledge bears on this question. Whether a particular word is loaded or neutral belongs to ch22 Tone & Register, and how a persuasive voice sounds belongs to ch28 Voice & Style. This section asks only what kind of appeal a sentence makes and whether it is fair. Figures of speech used to persuade are named in ch26 and judged in S32.

1. Read a persuasive piece once for each appeal: trust, feeling, facts.
2. Ask who is speaking and why you should trust them, to find ethos.
3. Ask what you are being made to feel and why, to find pathos.
4. Ask what is shown to be true and how, to find logos.
5. Label by what a sentence does, not by a single word in it.
6. Allow one sentence two labels, and say which one carries the weight.
7. Check borrowed ethos: does this person know about this question?
8. Check pathos: does the feeling fit the facts in kind and in size?
9. Check logos: are the numbers typical, or picked from the best day?
10. In your own writing, give the reader a reason to trust you, a reason to care and a reason to believe, and weight them for that reader.

• From Rohan's speech to the class: "I have waited at the Elm Road crossing every morning for three years, and last Monday I counted 46 cars in ten minutes."
• Meera says: "Picture a seven-year-old with a heavy school bag, waiting for a gap in the traffic that never comes."
• Kavya says: "As captain of the chess club for two seasons, I can tell you the beginners' table is full every week."
• From Grace's letter to the head teacher: "Our reading club has grown from six members to twenty-two since September, so we have outgrown our corner of the library."
• Tom says: "I'll be honest: a later start would mean a longer day for me too, but I still think it is right for our year."
• Amara says: "Every one of us has sat shivering through a winter assembly in that hall, so let's fix the heating before the Year 7s have to do it too."

• Ishaan says: "Coach Daniel, who has trained our team for ten years, says three practices a week is the most young players can recover from."
• Priya says: "The new menu is a hit - on pizza Friday, sales doubled!"
• Farhan says: "Anyone who cares about this school will sign the petition for later library hours; only a heartless person would walk past."
• Oliver says: "A famous quiz-show host says our library should open later, so it should."
• Hannah says: "I know some of you loved the old timetable, and so did I, but in Class 8B's survey 24 of 31 students said the new one gives them more time to eat."
• Mateo says: "As the team's goalkeeper, I have let in eleven goals from corners this season, and every one of them still stings - we need a corner drill."

Naming the strongest opposing point

A concession names the strongest point the other side would make, states it fairly, and grants what is true in it. It does not give up your claim. It shows the reader that you have looked at the whole question and that you are not hoping they will forget the best objection.

This is the fourth question of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge. The Counter question asks whether the argument names the strongest opposing point and answers it. This section is the naming; the next section, the rebuttal, is the answer.

One neighbour line: the linking words 'although' and 'however' belong to ch21 Transitions & Flow. Here the question is never which word you used, but whether the point you conceded was the strongest one and whether you granted it honestly.

Three tests tell an honest concession from one that only looks honest. Run all three every time.

Notice three things.

First, a concession does not need a special word. 'It is true that...', 'The strongest case against this is...', 'Mrs Iyer's worry is fair:' - each can open a concession. Which linking word fits is a ch21 question. What matters here is the move: the point is named and granted.

Second, conceding a point is not the same as giving up the claim. 'The cost is real' does not mean 'so the library should close at 3'. It means the claim now has to show why the benefit is worth the cost, and that is the rebuttal's job in the next section. Sometimes an honest concession does change the claim: if the cost is real, the writer might narrow the claim to 'until 5 pm on three days a week'. A narrowed claim is not a defeat. It is an argument that has become more accurate.

Third, a concession sets the agenda. Once you have named the strongest point, the reader expects you to answer it. Name it and then talk about something else, and you have argued the other side's case for them. So choose the point you name with care, and then keep your promise to answer it.

Picture a pair of old kitchen scales with two pans. Your claim's reasons sit in one pan; the other side's points sit in the other. A concession is lifting the other side's heaviest weight and placing it, in full view, on their pan. Hiding that weight does not help, because the reader puts it back. Swapping it for a feather (a weak point) does not help either. Only once the heaviest weight is on the scale can anyone see whether your pan still sinks lower.

In Discover you noticed that someone could reasonably think differently (S7). In Practice you named the other side (S15) and answered it (S16). Craft has now given you a claim worth arguing (S21), evidence (S22), a warrant (S23) and the three appeals (S24). This section sharpens the counter-point: not any opposing view, but the strongest one, stated fairly and granted honestly. The next section, S26, builds the rebuttal that answers it. S27 then names the straw man formally, and in Master the concession becomes a whole counter-argument paragraph in an argumentative essay (S35) and a round of a formal debate (S34).

Here is the case that takes real judgement: choosing which opposing point is the strongest when several are true. Class 9 proposes moving sports day from March to November, because March is hot and three students felt faint last year. Four objections come back. One: 'November has the half-yearly tests, so there are fewer free days for practice.' Two: 'The sports trophies are engraved with "March" on them.' Three: 'Some students prefer March because it is closer to the end of the year.' Four: 'November mornings are often foggy here, and the long-jump pit and track can be wet until mid-morning.' All four are true. Which is the strongest? Ask of each: if this point is right, how much does it damage the claim's own reason? The trophy point barely touches the claim; the engraving can change. The preference point is real but is a matter of taste, and taste on both sides cancels out. The tests point matters: practice time is a real cost. But the fog point attacks the claim's very reason - safety. The claim says November is safer; the fog point says November brings its own safety problem. That is the point a thoughtful opponent would raise first, and it is the one an honest concession must name. Now the second hard step. Suppose the fog point is simply right: the track really is wet on most November mornings. An honest writer does not hide that, and does not pretend it is small. Instead, the claim may need to change: 'Sports day should move to late October, or start at 11 am in November, when the fog has lifted.' That is not losing the argument. The claim has got better because the strongest objection was faced. So the strongest point is not the loudest one or the most common one. It is the one that, if true, would hurt your claim's own reason most - and conceding it honestly may mean narrowing what you claim.

The word concede comes from the Latin concedere, made of con- and cedere, 'to go' or 'to give way'. To concede, then, is to give way on one point - to step back from it - not to give up the whole ground. The same Latin cedere sits inside cede, recede, precede and proceed. That old meaning matches the move exactly. A good concession gives way on the point that is true, so that you can hold firm on the point that matters. The idea of stating the other side fairly before arguing is also very old. In Shastrartha, the Indian tradition of formal learned debate, a debater was expected to first set out the opposing view - the purvapaksha - fairly and in full, and only then give their own conclusion, the siddhanta. Setting out the other side weakly, so it was easy to knock down, would have shown that the debater had not understood it. The test this section calls Recognition - would the other side accept your version of their point? - is the same standard that tradition set: you have not earned the right to disagree with a view until you can state it as well as its supporters can.

A concession grants a point, not the whole argument. 'Fruit costs more than biscuits' can be conceded while still arguing that the canteen should sell fruit. An honest concession must be the strongest point, but it can be short. One clear sentence that names the point fairly often does more than a long paragraph. Do not invent an opposing point nobody holds just to have something to concede. If you cannot find a real objection, ask someone who disagrees. Which linking word opens the concession - although, however, admittedly, it is true that - is a word choice that belongs to ch21. No item in this section keys one linking word over another. A concession on its own leaves the point standing. The answer to it, the rebuttal, is the next section. Sometimes the strongest point is simply right. Then honesty means narrowing or changing the claim, and that counts as a stronger argument, not a weaker one.

1. List at least three objections to your claim before you write a word of the concession.
2. Choose the one that, if true, would hurt your claim's own reason most.
3. Write it in words its supporters would accept as their own.
4. Ask the Recognition test: would they say 'yes, that is our point'?
5. Grant plainly what is true in it - no sneer, no joke, no 'but they are wrong' with no reason.
6. Concede the point, not the people: never describe opponents' motives in place of their argument.
7. Do not settle for a trivial point that costs your claim nothing.
8. Keep the concession short and exact; one clear sentence is often enough.
9. If the conceded point is strong enough, narrow your claim instead of ignoring what you admitted.
10. Promise only what you can keep: whatever you concede, you must answer it next.

• From Meera's letter to the head teacher: The canteen should sell fruit at break. It is true that fruit costs more than biscuits, and some of it will go to waste in the first weeks.
• From Rohan's speech to the class: We should keep the reading club on Fridays. Some people say a Friday club is pointless because nobody reads anything. That is obviously wrong.
• Kavya says: Homework should be capped at one hour a night. Admittedly, some work, like a science-fair project, needs longer stretches, so a strict nightly cap would not fit every week.
• From Oliver's post for the school magazine: Of course, the people who want to keep the early start just do not care about our sleep.
• Hannah says: The park's old swings should be replaced this year. The park committee's worry is fair: new swings cost money that could mend the cracked path instead. But two swing seats are already broken, and the path can wait a season while the swings cannot.
• From Lucia's proposal to the chess club: We should meet twice a week, not once. I grant that only some members can stay late on Tuesdays, and that is the strongest reason to keep one meeting. So I propose Tuesday as an optional extra session, not a rule.

• From Ishaan's speech: I know many of you think the science fair should be judged by teachers, not by students, because teachers know the subjects better. That is a strong point, and I am not going to pretend it is not.
• Priya says: The bus stop outside school needs a shelter. People who disagree say the pavement is too narrow, and they are right that a full shelter would block it. A narrow roof fixed to the wall would not.
• From Farhan's article in the school magazine: I understand the other side, but house points should be scrapped.
• Emily says: People against a longer recess have only one argument - they hate fun.
• From Tom's note to the football coach: Admittedly, adding a fitness session would leave less time for penalty practice, and penalties won us two matches last season.
• From Kofi's speech to the robotics club: Some say building a second robot would split our team and halve our chances. I take that seriously: last year two half-finished robots lost to one finished one. So I propose we start the second only after the first passes its tests.

Answering without dismissing

A rebuttal answers the opposing point you have named. It engages the point as it was actually made, and it is itself a small argument: it needs its own support. There are four fair ways to rebut.

This is still the fourth question of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge. The concession named the strongest opposing point; the rebuttal answers it. And because a rebuttal is a small argument of its own, run the Support and Warrant questions on it too: what backs it, and does that backing actually answer this point?

Run three tests on any rebuttal, your own or someone else's.

Notice three things.

First, the four kinds of rebuttal are not equally available for every point. If the point's fact is solidly true, an Evidence rebuttal is closed to you, and pretending otherwise is dishonest. Then the Warrant, Weighing or Fix route is the fair one. Choose the kind that fits the point, not the kind that sounds strongest.

Second, a Weighing rebuttal must compare like with like and must not shrink the cost. 'A little waste is smaller than students having nothing fresh to eat' is fair only if the waste really is little. Pretending a large cost is tiny, so that it is easy to outweigh, is the straw man in a new coat.

Third, a Fix rebuttal changes your plan. That is honest and often the strongest answer - but check the fix with the same care as the original plan. A rota of volunteers that the school's rules do not allow is not a fix; it is a new problem. And if no rebuttal survives the three tests, the honest response is to narrow your claim, as in the last section.

Picture a tennis rally. The other side serves a ball - their point - to a particular spot on your court. A rebuttal is returning that ball, the one that was actually served, back over the net with control. A dismissal is stepping aside and letting the ball fly past while saying 'out!'. A straw man is hitting back a different ball you pulled out of your pocket. An ad hominem is shouting at the server. Only one of these keeps the rally going, and only that one can win the point.

In Practice you answered the other side for the first time (S16), and you saw that attacking the person does not answer the idea (S18). The last section, S25, taught you to name the strongest opposing point honestly. This section answers it, with four kinds of rebuttal and three tests. The next two sections, S27 and S28, name the fallacies that most often pose as rebuttals - ad hominem, straw man, bandwagon and others - so that you can call them out precisely. In Master, rebuttal becomes its own round in a formal debate (S34) and the second half of the counter-argument paragraph in an argumentative essay (S35).

Here is the hard case: three rebuttals to the same strong point, and you must judge which is fairest. Nandini argues that the school should hold sports day in November instead of March, because March is hot. She has conceded the strongest objection: November mornings are often foggy, and the track can be wet until mid-morning. Rebuttal A (Evidence): 'The fog is a myth - November is always clear.' Is that true? Nandini's own concession admits fog is common. An Evidence rebuttal is only fair when you have evidence that the point's fact is wrong. Here she has none, so A is a confident denial, and it fails the Support test. Rebuttal B (Weighing): 'A wet track is a small problem compared with students fainting in the heat.' This one is fairer: it compares two safety risks, which is like with like. But is a wet track really small? Runners can slip on a wet bend. If Nandini shrinks the cost to make it easy to outweigh, B becomes a straw man of her own concession. Rebuttal C (Fix): 'Start the events at 11 am, when last year's grounds log shows the track had dried on every November school day.' C keeps the fog point exactly as conceded, removes the problem it causes, and brings evidence that the fix works. It passes Match, Support and Respect. So C is the strongest. B can be made fair if Nandini states the wet-track risk honestly and still argues that heat is worse - with evidence, such as last year's three faint cases. A cannot be made fair without new evidence. Notice what the judgement rested on: not which reply sounded most confident, but which one answered the point as conceded, with support a doubter could check. And notice the honest fallback. If none of the three had worked - if the track stayed wet all day - Nandini would need to narrow her claim to late October, not keep rebutting.

The word rebut came into English from Old French rebouter, 'to push back' - re-, 'back', and bouter, 'to push' or 'to thrust'. The image is physical: a rebuttal pushes the point back across the line it came over. It does not pretend the point was never made. Refute is a different word with a stronger meaning. It comes from the Latin refutare, 'to drive back' or 'to disprove'. In careful use, to refute a point is to show that it is false; to rebut it is to answer it, which may or may not prove it false. The difference matters. A Weighing rebuttal or a Fix rebuttal answers a point without refuting it. Saying 'I have refuted their argument' when you have only outweighed it is an overclaim, and an alert reader or judge will notice. The idea of answering, rather than dismissing, also sits at the heart of the three classical appeals that Aristotle described in his Rhetoric. Logos persuades through reasons. A brush-off offers none, so whatever it does to a listener, it is not persuading through logos.

A rebuttal does not have to prove the other side false. Showing a mistaken fact is one way; showing the fact proves less, weighing a bigger gain, or offering a fix are equally fair. Choose the kind of rebuttal that fits the point. If the point's fact is solidly true, do not deny it. A rebuttal needs its own support. 'That is not true' and 'that does not matter' are claims, not answers. A rebuttal can be partial. 'This does not remove the cost, but it halves it' is honest and often convincing. Claiming more than your evidence shows is an overclaim. A fix changes your plan; check it as carefully as the plan itself. The fallacies that pose as rebuttals - ad hominem, straw man, bandwagon - are named fully in S27 and S28. Here the test is simpler: does the reply answer the point that was made, with a reason? If no rebuttal survives the tests, narrow the claim. That is honest arguing, not defeat.

1. Write the conceded point in its supporters' own words before you answer it.
2. Try all four kinds - Evidence, Warrant, Weighing, Fix - and keep the ones that are honestly open to you.
3. Use an Evidence rebuttal only when you have evidence the point's fact is wrong.
4. In a Warrant rebuttal, grant the fact and show exactly what it fails to prove.
5. In a Weighing rebuttal, compare like with like and state the cost at its true size.
6. In a Fix rebuttal, check the fix for new problems before you offer it.
7. Give every rebuttal its own support: a number, an example, an expert, a reason.
8. Run the Match test: does the reply answer this point, not a weaker or different one?
9. Answer the idea, never the person; keep the tone firm and fair.
10. Claim only what the rebuttal proves; if nothing works, narrow your claim.

• From Aarav's speech to the student council: The canteen staff say a fruit stall would need a third worker. But the Class 10 volunteers have offered to run it on a rota, and Mr Kapoor has agreed to train them.
• Nandini says: Opponents say a later finish would make winter clubs end in the dark. That is just not true.
• From Ishaan's article for the school magazine: Some say a new reading club would pull students away from sport. But the sign-up sheet shows that only four of the twenty-two students who joined play for any team.
• Grace says: The coach's worry about tired players is fair. But who listens to a coach who has never played professionally?
• From James's letter to the head teacher: The caretaker worries that bike racks would block the fire exit. The plan puts the racks against the gym wall, twenty metres from any exit, as the site map shows.
• Yuki says: People against a second chess meeting say it would tire members out. But they just want the club to stay small, and everyone I know wants two meetings.

• Meera says: It is true that fruit costs more than biscuits. But in the trial week, fruit cups sold out every day at a price that covered their cost, according to the canteen's sales sheet.
• From Kabir's speech: Opponents say a school garden would be too much work for one class. So they think students should never do anything hard?
• Diya says: A longer lunch would cost ten minutes of lessons, I accept. But the afternoons would be calmer: in last term's trial week of longer lunches, Mrs Rao logged half as many afternoon behaviour slips.
• Sophie says: The art teacher says the hall is too dark for the exhibition. But the hall is great, and the exhibition should be there.
• From Harry's letter: The library's worry that lent laptops will be lost is reasonable. A signed loan form and a small deposit, as the sports store uses for cricket kit, would cut that risk without stopping the scheme.
• Kwame says: Some say the robotics team should not enter the second competition because it is too far away. It is in fact closer than last year's competition, which the team reached easily by train.

Fallacies that attack or mistime

A fallacy is a move that looks like a reason but does no reasoning work. This section takes three of them. Two hit the wrong target: ad hominem (Latin for "to the person") rejects a reason because of who gave it, and straw man answers a weaker version of a view than the one actually held. The third mistimes: false cause treats "this came after that", or "these two happen together", as "that caused this".

Run the Argument Check on each one - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - and the fallacy shows up as the question it fails: ad hominem offers a fact about a person as Support, though it supports nothing about the idea, straw man fakes the Counter, and false cause rests on a Warrant that was never shown.

Notice what each sound look-alike adds. It does one extra piece of work that the fallacy skips: it ties the doubt to the evidence, it quotes fairly, or it rules out the other explanations. That piece of work is what you look for.

Here are three pairs. In each, the two arguments share a topic and a shape. Decide which question of the Argument Check separates them before you read the right-hand column.

Notice three things.

First, the fallacy and its look-alike are often the same length, on the same topic, with the same tone. Nothing on the surface tells them apart. Only the reasoning does.

Second, each fallacy fails one question more clearly than the others. Ad hominem fails Support: a fact about the speaker is offered where evidence about the idea should be. Straw man fails Counter: the opposing view is replaced before it is answered. False cause fails Warrant: the step from "after" to "because" is assumed, not shown.

Third, a verdict of "fallacy" is a verdict about the reasoning, not about the claim. The lights might really have helped the choir. The argument has simply not shown it. A claim argued badly can still be true, and the fair response is to ask for better reasoning, not to declare the opposite.

Picture an archery range. The reason someone gives is the target. Ad hominem shoots at the archer standing beside the target and claims a hit. Straw man sets up a cardboard target of its own, closer and bigger, and hits that. False cause sees a bird fly past just before an arrow lands and gives the bird the credit. A sound reply aims at the real target, and a sound cause claim can show what actually sent the arrow there.

In Practice S18 you met "attacking the person instead of the idea" as an unfair way to argue; here it gets its full name and its look-alike. S25 and S26 taught you to state the other side fairly and answer it: a straw man is what happens when that statement is unfair. S23's warrant is exactly what a false cause is missing. Next, S28 adds four fallacies that overreach - hasty generalisation, bandwagon, slippery slope and false dilemma - and S29 judges loaded words used on purpose. In Master, S31 weighs whole arguments where a fallacy is one flaw among several, and S33 turns the fair question about a source into a full skill: spotting bias.

Here is a case where the line between a fair question and ad hominem is genuinely fine. Nandini argues that the tennis club should buy its new rackets from the sports shop on Station Road, because they are the best value in town. That shop belongs to Nandini's uncle. Ishaan replies: "Nandini's uncle owns the shop, so we can't trust this." Is Ishaan's reply a fallacy? It depends on what Nandini's argument rests on. Suppose Nandini simply said, "Trust me, they are the best value." Then Nandini's word is the only evidence, and a family interest bears directly on how much that word should carry. Ishaan's point is a fair one: it is a reason to ask for evidence before deciding. It still does not show the rackets are poor value - only that Nandini's say-so is not enough. Now suppose Nandini brought a price list comparing three shops, with the same racket at each, and the Station Road shop cheapest by a clear margin. The figures can be checked by anyone. The uncle does not change a single price. If Ishaan rejects the list because of the uncle, without checking a figure, the reply has become ad hominem: it answers the person and leaves the evidence untouched. So the fair judgement is this. A person's interest is a reason to check, never on its own a reason to reject. Ask: can the evidence be tested without trusting the person? If yes, test it - and then the person's interest stops mattering. If no, the interest is a fair point, and the right next step is to look for evidence from someone with nothing to gain. The same reply, word for word, can be sound in one argument and a fallacy in another. That is why this chapter never keys a fallacy from a sentence alone.

All three fallacies carry their history in their names. Ad hominem is Latin: ad means "to" and hominem means "the person". An argumentum ad hominem is an argument aimed at the person rather than at the point. False cause has an old Latin label too: post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "after this, therefore because of this". The phrase names the exact mistake: treating the order of two events as proof that the first produced the second. Straw man pictures a figure stuffed with straw, like a scarecrow. It is easy to knock over, because nobody real is inside it pushing back. And here is a pairing that catches almost everyone. On hot, sunny days, more ice cream is sold and more people get sunburnt. The two rise and fall together. Ice cream does not cause sunburn, and sunburn does not cause ice cream sales: the sunshine causes both. When two things move together, always ask whether a third thing is moving them.

A fallacy is a feature of a move, not of a person. Say "that reply is a straw man", never "you are a straw-man arguer". A fallacy shows that the reasoning fails, not that the claim is false. The fair response is to ask for better reasoning. Questioning a source whose word is the evidence, for a reason that bears on it, is not ad hominem. It is a reason to check, not a reason to reject. A short or plain summary is not a straw man if its holder would accept it. Cause claims can be sound. A comparison, a mechanism or a reversed change can support one. Real arguments are often mixed: a sound reason and a fallacious remark side by side. Judge each part. And whether a word such as "lazy" is loaded belongs to ch22 Tone & Register; this section judges only the move it makes.

1. Write down the claim being answered before you judge any reply to it.
2. Ask what each reply is about: the reason, the person, or a version of the view nobody said.
3. When a reply mentions a person, ask whether that person's word is itself the evidence.
4. If it is, treat a relevant doubt as a reason to check, not a reason to reject.
5. Test a summary by asking whether its holder would say "yes, that is what I meant".
6. For any cause claim, ask what else changed at the same time.
7. Look for a comparison, a mechanism or a reversed change before accepting a cause.
8. Name a fallacy only when you can say which question of the Argument Check it fails.
9. Say "sound argument - no fallacy" when the reasoning holds; it is a real answer.
10. Point out a fallacy by showing the gap, and then answer the best version of the claim.

• Meera says: Kabir wants a longer lunch break, but Kabir is late to every lesson, so we can ignore the idea.
• Rohan says: Dev claims the library was shut on Saturday, but Dev was at a cricket match all day and never went there, so we should ask the librarian.
• From Priya's speech to the class: Our team won both matches after we got the new green socks, so the socks made us win.
• Hannah suggests the chess club meet on two afternoons a week. Tom replies: So Hannah wants everyone to give up every other club for chess.
• Grace says: Oliver's point is that the bus stop is too far from the gate for younger pupils in the rain. That is true, but a covered path would fix it more cheaply than moving the stop.
• Kofi says: The tomatoes in the shaded bed grew half as tall as the ones in the sunny bed, though both had the same soil and the same water, so the shade probably slowed them.

• Ishaan says: We should not trust Farhan's count of the bake sale money, because Farhan wears the same old trainers every day.
• Nandini says: Since the new wall clock went up in the music room, the choir has sung out of tune, so the clock is the problem.
• Aarav suggests a quieter corner in the library for reading. Kavya replies: So Aarav wants a library where nobody may speak at all.
• Oliver says: After we put netting over one row of seedlings, the birds stopped pulling them up, while the uncovered row beside it kept losing plants, so the netting protected them.
• Hannah says: Leo's idea for a later club start may sound odd from someone who oversleeps, but the idea should be judged on the timetable, and the timetable has room.
• Lucia says: Yuki thinks the swings should be repaired before the slide. I disagree, because the slide's ladder has a loose step, and a fall from the ladder is higher.

Fallacies that overreach

Every fallacy in this section is an overreach: the claim goes further than its evidence. Hasty generalisation goes from one or a few cases to all. Bandwagon goes from "many people believe or do it" to "it is true or good". Slippery slope goes from one small step to a distant disaster, through links nobody has shown. False dilemma squeezes many options into two.

Run the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - and each overreach shows up at a particular step: hasty generalisation offers too thin a Support, bandwagon and slippery slope assume a Warrant (popular means right; each link will follow), and false dilemma hides the Counter by leaving out the options the other side would name.

In S27 the fallacies hit the wrong target or mistimed a cause. These four aim at the right target but claim too much. The repair is usually the same: shrink the claim to fit the evidence, or gather the evidence the claim needs.

Four pairs, one for each fallacy. Decide which question of the Argument Check separates them before you read the right-hand column.

Notice three things.

First, the sound look-alikes are not timid. "Fourteen of twenty had missing parts" is a strong claim. It is sound because the evidence is just as strong. Soundness is a match between reach and evidence, not a matter of saying little.

Second, popularity is sometimes the very thing the claim is about. A vote, a waiting list or a sign-up sheet is evidence for "people want this". It is never, on its own, evidence for "this is true" or "this is best".

Third, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and it gets weaker with every link added. Even if each step of a four-step chain is fairly likely, the whole chain can be unlikely. Ask for evidence at every link, not just the first.

And a false dilemma is answered by naming the third option: "Either we cancel sports day or everyone gets sunburnt" collapses the moment someone says "or we move it to the morning and put up shade".

Picture a bridge built out from a riverbank. The evidence is the riverbank and the solid supports; the claim is how far the bridge reaches. A sound argument reaches only as far as its supports hold. Hasty generalisation builds a long bridge on one post. Bandwagon counts the crowd standing on it as if they were supports. Slippery slope adds span after span with no posts beneath. False dilemma paints out every bank but two.

S27 taught three fallacies that aim at the wrong target or mistime a cause. This section adds four that aim at the right target but claim too much. You met bandwagon first in adverts in Practice S14; here it is judged as a step in an argument. S22's types of evidence tell you how far a sample or an example can reach, and the repair for an overreach - stating a claim only as strongly as its evidence allows - becomes a skill of its own in S30. S29 next looks at loaded words chosen on purpose. In Master, S31 judges whole arguments and S36 follows these same moves through adverts, editorials and posts.

The hardest of the four to judge is the slippery slope, because some chains are real. Kabir argues: "If the chess club is given the spare classroom every lunchtime, the other clubs will ask for rooms too, there won't be enough rooms, and some clubs will have to close." Is that a slippery slope? Do not decide from the shape. Test each link. Link one: if chess gets a room, other clubs will ask. Is there evidence? Suppose last year, when the art club was given a room, the drama club and the robotics club both asked within a week. Then link one has support: it has happened before. Link two: there won't be enough rooms. That depends on facts anyone can check - how many spare rooms there are and how many clubs might ask. If there are four spare rooms and three clubs, the link fails. Link three: some clubs will have to close. Even if rooms ran short, clubs could share, alternate days or meet in the hall. Closing is one outcome among several, and nothing shows it is the likely one. So the judgement is mixed. The first link may be fair, a precedent with evidence. The second is checkable. The third is a leap. As stated, the argument is a slippery slope, because it treats the whole chain as certain. A sound version would claim only what the evidence reaches: "If chess gets the room, other clubs will probably ask, as they did last year, so we should decide now how rooms are shared." Notice also how chains weaken. If each of three links is fairly likely - say three chances in four - then all three happening together is less likely than not: three-quarters of three-quarters of three-quarters is under a half. A chain that sounds reasonable link by link can still be improbable as a whole.

Two of these fallacies carry pictures in their names. A bandwagon was, at first, a real wagon: a large cart that carried a band of musicians in a parade. To "jump on the bandwagon" came to mean joining something because it is popular and noisy, not because you have weighed it. The older Latin name for the fallacy is argumentum ad populum - "an appeal to the people". Dilemma comes from Greek: di- means "two", and a lemma is a premise, something taken as given. A dilemma is a choice between two. A false dilemma is a choice presented as two when there are more. And here is why hasty generalisation is so tempting. Toss a fair coin three times. It will land heads all three times about once in every eight tries - often enough that you will see it happen. Small samples throw up striking patterns by chance alone. Three heads in a row tells you very little about the coin; three hundred tosses tell you a great deal.

Generalising is not a fallacy; generalising further than the evidence is. A fair sample can support a claim about a group. A large sample is not automatically fair. Ask who was asked, not only how many. Popularity is real evidence when the claim is about popularity: demand, a vote, what people want. It is not evidence that something is true or best. An "if, then" claim is sound when each link has evidence. Ask for evidence at every link. An either-or is sound when the facts force it. Name the constraint, or name the missing option. Naming a fallacy does not prove the claim false. Narrowing an overreach - "probably", "most", "in our class" - is a repair that S30 develops; cutting wordy hedges for length belongs to ch20 Conciseness.

1. Write down how far the claim reaches: how many, how certain, how far ahead, how many options.
2. Write down what the evidence actually covers.
3. For a generalisation, ask how many were checked and who they were.
4. Treat a large but one-sided sample as narrow, not as fair.
5. When popularity is offered, ask whether the claim is about popularity or about truth.
6. Break any chain into links and ask for evidence at each one.
7. Remember that a long chain is weaker than any one of its links.
8. Faced with two options, try to name a third; if the facts rule it out, say so.
9. Say "sound argument - no fallacy" when the reach of the claim matches its evidence.
10. Repair an overreach by narrowing the claim or gathering the evidence it needs.

• Aarav says: I asked two people in the lunch queue, and both hate the new menu, so the whole school hates it.
• Meera says: The library asked all 180 students in Years 7 and 8, and 141 wanted Saturday opening, so most of those years want it.
• From Rohan's speech to the class: Everyone in Class 9 is buying ZoomFeet trainers, so they must be the best trainers for running.
• Emily says: If we let Year 7 use the music room at lunch, soon they will want it every day, then they will take over the instruments, and the band will have nowhere to practise and will fold.
• Oliver says: Either we cancel sports day or we let everyone get sunburnt.
• Yuki says: The hall is free on only one Saturday this month, and both the chess tournament and the bake sale need all of it, so we must choose one for that day.

• Priya says: The library should buy a second copy of the dragon book, because 34 students are on the waiting list for it.
• Farhan says: The first two robotics kits we opened had missing parts, so every kit in the box of twenty must be faulty.
• Kavya says: If we leave the garden gate open tonight, the rabbits from the field can get in; last Tuesday it was left open and the lettuces were gone by morning.
• Grace says: Either the drama club puts on a full musical or it shouldn't bother with a show at all.
• Tom says: Most of the team thinks the referee got it wrong, so the goal should not count.
• Kofi says: If we let one student charge a phone in class, everyone will bring chargers, the sockets will overload, and the school will have a fire.

Using a loaded word on purpose

A loaded word carries a judgement as well as a meaning. Ch22 Tone & Register taught you to tell a loaded word from a neutral one; this section asks a different question. When a writer chooses a loaded word on purpose, to persuade, is that a fair move?

It depends on what the word is doing. Sometimes it sums up a judgement the evidence has already earned, and adds honest feeling to a real reason. Sometimes it does the arguing on its own, so the reader is tilted without being given anything to weigh. Three tests tell the two apart.

Notice that "unsafe" and "soggy" are as strong as "lazy". Strength is not the problem; whether the evidence earns it is.

In the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - a loaded word is tested at Support, because it can feel like evidence without being any, so the judging step asks what the word claims and what actually backs it.

Loaded words go wrong in three main ways, and go right in two. Knowing the five lets you name exactly what a word is doing.

Notice three things.

First, the same word can be fair in one passage and unfair in another. "Failing" is earned by a record of empty water tanks; it would be unearned if the tank had been empty once. The word is never judged alone - only the word next to its evidence.

Second, a loaded word aimed at people slides toward the fallacies of S27. A label for the people who disagree ("sore losers", "whiners") is where ad hominem begins; a loaded retelling of their view ("they want to scrap homework and do nothing all evening") is where straw man begins.

Third, the soft direction is the hardest to catch. "Streamlined", "a slight adjustment", "just a small contribution" sound calm, so readers relax - which is exactly why they need the earn test most.

Picture a stage light with a coloured filter in front of it. A good lighting designer uses a red filter on a scene where something really is on fire: the colour helps the audience see what is truly there. A dishonest one shines red on an empty stage to make the audience feel danger that is not there. A loaded word is the filter. Before you judge it, look past the colour and ask what is actually on the stage.

In Discover you noticed when a claim was only said louder. In Practice you met bandwagon, repetition and attacking the person in adverts and speeches. Earlier in Craft you met pathos (S24) and the fallacies of S27 and S28 - and a loaded label for the other side is often where ad hominem or straw man begins. This section judges single words chosen to persuade. Next, S30 turns to a different kind of word - might, probably, clearly, undoubtedly - and asks how strongly a claim should be stated. In Master, S31 weighs whole arguments and S33 reads a one-sided source, where loaded words are often the first clue.

Here is the hard case: a sound argument wrapped in unfair words. Nandini writes a notice for the community garden: "Thanks to careless litterbugs, our compost bins have been ruined. We need a clear sign showing what goes in each bin." Run the tests one at a time. Swap. "Plastic wrappers have been put in our compost bins. We need a clear sign showing what goes in each bin." The argument still stands - wrappers in the bins are a real reason for a sign. So the loaded words are not holding the argument up. Earn. The facts, from the garden's own record: wrappers were found in two of the four bins, and the compost can still be used once they are picked out. "Ruined" claims far more than that. It fails. Recognise. "Careless litterbugs" assumes the people meant no care. But there was no sign; some may simply not have known which bin was which - the very problem the notice wants to fix. They would not recognise themselves in "litterbugs". It fails. So what is the fair judgement? The claim is sound and the request is reasonable. The words are unfair: they overstate the damage and blame people the notice needs on its side. Both are true at once. That is the lesson. An unfair word does not make a claim false, and a true claim does not make its words fair. Judge the argument and the words separately. The fair rewrite keeps the argument and lets the evidence carry the weight: "Wrappers have turned up in two of our four compost bins. A clear sign would help everyone sort their waste."

English has a name for each direction a word can tilt. A euphemism is a soft word that makes something sound better than it is - "streamlined" for "cut", "a small contribution" for a fee. The word comes from Greek eu, "well", and pheme, "speaking": speaking well of something. A pejorative is a word that makes something sound worse - "rickety", "lazy", "litterbug". It comes from Latin pejor, "worse". So loaded language has always run both ways, up and down, and the soft direction is the one people notice least, because nothing in it sounds like an attack. The idea that feeling is a real part of persuasion is very old too. Aristotle's Rhetoric, written in the 4th century BCE, named pathos - the appeal to the audience's feelings - as one of three appeals, alongside ethos and logos. He treated it as a genuine means of persuasion, not a trick. That is this section's stance: stirring feeling is fair when the facts justify the feeling, and unfair when the feeling is asked to stand in for the facts.

Spotting a loaded word is ch22's job; this section assumes you can, and asks only whether using it to persuade is fair. A loaded word is not unfair because it is strong. "Unsafe", "failing" and "a misery" can all be earned. Judge the word against its evidence, never on its own. A fair loaded word does not rescue a weak argument, and an unfair one does not sink a sound argument. Judge the words and the reasoning separately, then say both. The earn test needs the evidence in front of you. If a passage gives none, the fair judgement is "unearned here", not "false". A label for the other side is not automatically ad hominem: it becomes one when it is offered in place of answering their reason.

1. Underline every word in the passage that carries a judgement.
2. Swap each one for a neutral word and reread the argument.
3. If no reason is left after the swap, the word was doing the arguing.
4. Find the exact line of evidence that is meant to earn the word.
5. Ask whether that evidence is as strong as the word: "two bins" is not "ruined".
6. Check the soft words too - "slight", "streamlined", "just a small".
7. Ask whether the people described would recognise themselves in the word.
8. Treat a label for the other side as a warning sign of ad hominem or straw man.
9. Judge the words and the argument separately, and say both.
10. To fix an unfair word, bring the evidence into the sentence and keep only the strength it earns.

• Aarav tells the sports captain: Our cricket nets have a torn side panel that has let three balls onto the path this month, so the nets are unsafe for anyone walking past.
• Kavya's poster: Don't let the boring old library timetable ruin your weekend - sign the petition!
• From Farhan's speech to the class: Only selfish people would vote against a longer recess.
• Oliver's letter about the class trip: Families are asked for just a small top-up of 40 pounds.
• Hannah tells the council: In the canteen's own tasting, 26 of 30 pupils called the new chips soft and cold, so the soggy chips need a new recipe.
• Mateo argues for the robotics club: Joining is a no-brainer - every smart student has already signed up.

• Ishaan's report for the community garden: The water tank was found empty on four of the last six Saturdays, so the watering rota is failing.
• Priya's poster: Save our beloved music room from the cruel timetable cuts!
• Tenzin answers in a class debate: My opponents want to scrap homework entirely and let everyone do nothing all evening.
• Tom writes to the council: The shelter at our bus stop has a hole over the bench, and on wet mornings twelve of us stand in the rain - it is a soaking misery.
• Emily reads out an advert: Ditch your clumsy old shoes and fly with ZoomFeet trainers!
• Yuki's notice for the board-game club: Our battered sets are missing pieces from five of eight games, so new sets would let every table play.

How strongly to state a claim

How strongly you state a claim is a choice, and it is part of the argument. The rule is simple to say: a claim's strength should match its evidence.

Two dials set the strength. The certainty dial says how sure you are: might, may, probably, likely, clearly, certainly, undoubtedly. The scope dial says how many or how often: some, many, most, all; sometimes, usually, always. Both dials must sit at the height of the evidence.

So "clearly" is not banned: the library's own count of 412 visits, more than any other room, earns "clearly the busiest room". And "might" is not weak: one friend's good experience of the robotics kit earns exactly "it might suit some beginners".

Ch20 Conciseness cuts stacked hedges such as "I think it might possibly perhaps" for length; this section asks a different question - not how many hedging words, but how strong the claim should be.

In the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - strength is where Claim meets Support: the claim's certainty and scope words must not promise more than the support can deliver, or the Counter step will break it with a single example.

Matching the dials to the evidence is the core. Four finer moves make it precise.

Notice three things.

First, one argument can need different strengths in different places. A record of what happened can be stated flatly ("the bus was late on 18 of 20 days"); what it suggests about the cause needs a hedge ("which suggests the new route is too long"); and a recommendation needs to allow for the other side ("so the route should change, unless the timetable cannot").

Second, "clearly", "obviously" and "undoubtedly" can disguise a claim with no reason. They tell the reader the case is closed. If no case has been made, the word is doing the arguing - the same move as an unearned loaded word in S29.

Third, a hedge is not an escape hatch. "Maybe the bake sale money was miscounted - just asking" uses "maybe" to raise a suspicion without any evidence. A hedge lowers how sure a claim is; it never makes an unsupported claim fair to raise.

Picture a footbridge with a sign: "Safe for 2 tonnes." The evidence is the bridge; the claim is the load you drive across. "Undoubtedly, always, everyone" is a lorry - it may look impressive, but it sends the whole argument into the river. "It might possibly perhaps" is a bicycle wheeled across a bridge built for cars - safe, but a waste of a good bridge. Read the sign first, then load the claim to match.

In Practice, S13 taught strong and weak evidence. In Craft, S22 gave each type of evidence its strength and its limit, S28 named hasty generalisation - a big claim from too few cases - and S29 judged whether a loaded word is earned. This section brings those together on a single question: how strongly should the claim itself be stated? It closes the Craft band. In Master, S31 weighs a whole argument, S35 writes a thesis that is exactly as strong as the essay can defend, and S38 sets claims under exam conditions.

Here is the hard case: one argument whose parts need different strengths. Meera wants sports day moved from the afternoon to the morning. Meera's evidence: the school's records for the last three sports days show afternoon temperatures above 33 degrees on two of them, and the school nurse, Mrs D'Souza, treated nine pupils for heat on those afternoons. At the morning practice sessions over the same years she treated one. Meera's first draft: "Undoubtedly, a morning sports day would end heat problems for good." Run the ladder on each part. The facts first. Two hot afternoons out of three, nine pupils against one - these are records. They can be stated flatly: "On two of the last three sports days the afternoon was above 33 degrees, and nine pupils needed the nurse." Then the inference. Does the record show that the afternoon heat caused the problems? It points strongly that way - the gap between nine and one is large, and the mechanism is plain. But three years is a short record, and a morning can be hot too. "End heat problems for good" overreaches. "Strongly suggests a morning start would mean fewer pupils affected by heat" matches. Then the recommendation. Whether sports day should move depends on more than heat: buses, parents' work, the field's morning shade. A fair recommendation allows for that: "so we should move it to the morning, unless the bus timetable cannot change." The full claim now has three strengths in it - flat, strong, and conditional - and each one is exactly as strong as what supports it. That is harder to write than one "undoubtedly", and much harder to knock down.

The word doubt carries the number two inside it. It comes from Latin dubitare, "to waver, to be uncertain", which is related to dubius, from duo, "two" - the picture is of a mind standing between two choices. So "undoubtedly" says, word for word, that your mind is not split at all. That is a big promise to make. Probable has a history of testing. It comes from Latin probabilis, from probare, "to test or prove" - the same root as probe and proof. A probable claim, at its root, is one that has been tested and found worthy of belief, not one that is merely hoped. And hedging has a well-known use in betting. To hedge a bet is to place a smaller bet on the other side, so that a loss is not total - fencing the bet in, as a hedge fences a field. A hedged claim works the same way: it protects the writer from being wholly wrong, which is fair when the evidence is uncertain and costly when it is not. Scientific writing is a good model. Reports of experiments routinely say "the results suggest" or "this is consistent with", because one study rarely settles a question - and say "we found" for what was actually measured.

Cutting stacked hedges for length - "I think it might possibly perhaps" down to "it might" - is ch20 Conciseness. This section changes how strong a claim is, never just how long. Confident words are not banned. "Clearly" and "every" are fair when the evidence is decisive and in front of the reader. Hedges are not weak by nature. "Might" is exactly right for one case; it is only wrong when the evidence has earned more. A recommendation or a value claim ("we should") is judged partly on its reasons and partly on the other side, so its strength depends on the counter as well as the support. A hedge never makes an unsupported suggestion fair. "Maybe" sets how sure a supported claim is; it is not a way to raise a suspicion with no evidence.

1. Circle every certainty word (might, probably, clearly) and every scope word (some, most, all, always).
2. Write the claim's evidence beside it in a few words.
3. Find the evidence's rung: one case, a small sample, a large fair sample or full record, a checked fact.
4. Set both dials to that rung - lower an overclaim, raise an underclaim.
5. State facts and counts flatly; hedge what you infer from them.
6. Keep the scope inside the sample: one class is not the school.
7. Use "clearly" only after the evidence has been shown.
8. Give a recommendation room for the other side: "unless", "if".
9. Never use "maybe" to raise a suspicion you cannot support.
10. Ask the Counter question: would one example break this claim? If so, lower it until one example cannot.

• From Meera's report on the reading club: In our survey of all 64 members, 51 said they read more since joining, so the club probably helps most members read more.
• Rohan tells the class: My cousin's school moved lunch to 1 o'clock and loves it, so a later lunch would undoubtedly work here.
• Kavya's poster: Clearly, the chess club should get the hall on Fridays.
• From Oliver's science fair write-up: In all twelve trials, the shaded seedlings grew more slowly than the ones in sunlight, so in our set-up shade clearly slowed their growth.
• Grace writes to the council: The caretaker's log records the bus stop light out on 19 of the last 20 evenings, so it might be worth someone looking at it.
• Kofi says: Our class tried the new spelling game for two weeks and our test scores rose, which suggests the game may help - a longer trial would tell us more.

• Ishaan argues: Every student in the school wants a longer recess - I asked my five friends.
• From Priya's notice: The library's own count shows 412 visits last week, more than any other room, so the library is clearly the busiest room in the school.
• Farhan's speech: We counted 60 bikes for 40 spaces every morning this week, so the racks might possibly be a bit full sometimes.
• Tom writes: Maybe the canteen is quietly using cheaper rice - just asking.
• Emily's report: In the trial week, most of the 30 tasters preferred the new soup, so the canteen could try it for a month.
• Yuki's notice: The bake sale has sold out by noon at all four sales this year, so next time we should probably bake more.

Thinking like a writer · ages 16–19

Evaluating a whole argument

Evaluating a whole argument means answering the four questions and then asking how the answers fit together. A claim holds when its support reaches it, its warrants really connect, and its strongest objection is met. One impressive part does not make the whole strong, and one weak part does not make the whole worthless.

This is the Argument Check run in full - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - and in this section the judging is the whole skill.

Before you give a verdict, find out how the reasons are built. Some reasons stand side by side; others lean on each other. The same flaw does very different damage in each.

Notice three things.

First, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, while independent reasons can survive the loss of one. So the first job is to test each reason: if this one were false, would the others still support the claim? If yes, they are legs. If no, they are links.

Second, the commonest repair is not new evidence but a smaller claim. "The quiz club will be popular with every student" fails on 26 replies from one class; "there is enough interest in Class 9 to start a quiz club" holds on exactly the same replies.

Third, a weak argument does not prove its claim false. If the bake-sale chain breaks, the sale might still raise more in the hall; you have learned only that this argument has not shown it. Your verdict is on the argument, never on the topic.

Picture a table being inspected before anyone puts weight on it. The tabletop is the claim. Each independent reason is a leg, and the warrant is the joint where that leg meets the top. The counter-argument is the heavy box someone is about to set down on it. You do not pass the table for its finest leg, and you do not scrap it for one wobbly one. You ask: with that box on top, do enough legs, properly joined, still hold it up - and if not, would a smaller top stand?

This section is where the Craft band's tools meet. S21 built the claim, S22 weighed the types of evidence, S23 named the warrant, S25 and S26 handled concession and rebuttal, S27 and S28 named the fallacies, and S30 tuned how strongly a claim is stated. Here they are used at once, on one argument, to reach one verdict. The rest of Master builds on this judgement: S33 adds the source's own interest, S34 and S35 build debate rounds and essay outlines that must survive this test, S38 asks you to run it fast, and S40 asks you to survive it with an argument of your own.

Here is the hard case: an argument with one strong reason, one fragile chain and an objection answered unfairly - for a claim that may well be true. Rohan writes to the school magazine: "Sports day should move from May to February. First, Coach Daniel's records show that in each of the last three years, at least two May events were cut short because of the afternoon heat, while none of the February practice meets lost an event. Second, February has fewer class tests, so more students will train, so the races will be faster, so more house records will fall. Some say February is already busy with the annual play, but people who say that just don't care about sport." Run the four questions. Claim: clear, specific and debatable. No problem there. Support for the heat reason: a record kept over three years by someone placed to know, with February as a comparison. This is strong, and it reaches the claim directly: the May heat cuts events short. Support for the test reason: a chain of four links. Fewer tests might mean more training; more training might mean faster races; faster races might mean more records. Each link is a guess, and all of them must hold for the last one to follow. The chain adds almost nothing. Counter: the strongest objection - the clash with the play - is named, and then answered with an attack on the people who raise it. That is ad hominem, and it leaves the clash itself untouched. So what is the verdict? Not "fallacious, so wrong": the heat record still stands and supports moving out of May on its own. Not "strong, because of the records": a reader worried about the play has been given nothing. The fair verdict is that the argument holds in part. The heat record is a real reason to move sports day out of May; the case for February in particular is not yet made, because the clash with the play is exactly the point a doubtful reader needs answered. The repair is specific: drop the chain, keep the records, and answer the play - for example by showing that the two can fall in different weeks. And notice what the verdict does not say. It does not say February is the wrong month. A weak case for a claim is not a case against it.

The word argument comes from the Latin arguere, "to make clear". In its oldest sense an argument is not a quarrel; it is an attempt to make something clear to someone else - which is exactly what you test when you ask whether a whole case holds. Long before any modern textbook, the Nyaya tradition of Indian logic set out an argument in five members: the proposition (pratijna), the reason (hetu), the example with a general rule (udaharana), the application to this case (upanaya) and the conclusion (nigamana). Its classic example runs: the hill has fire, because it has smoke; wherever there is smoke there is fire, as in a kitchen; this hill has such smoke; so the hill has fire. Look at the third member. It does not leave the connecting step to the listener. It states the general rule - what this chapter calls the warrant - and anchors it in an example anyone can check. Laid out like this, a whole argument can be judged member by member: is the reason true of this hill? Does the general rule hold? Does it really apply here? The five-member shape makes every joint visible, which is exactly what judging a whole argument needs.

A verdict on an argument is not a verdict on its claim. A claim can be true and badly argued, or doubtful and argued well from evidence that later turns out to be wrong. Writers rarely label their reasons as linked or independent. Decide by asking: if this reason were false, would the others still support the claim on their own? "Holds" never means "proved beyond all doubt". Arguments about timetables, clubs and school rules are judged on balance; a verdict says how well the case is made, not that no sensible person could disagree. The three verdict settings are a working scale for this chapter, not an official marking scheme. Every scene, name, survey and record in this section is invented for practice.

1. Find the claim first, and note exactly how far it reaches: some, most, all; helps, fixes, will.
2. List every reason separately, and merge any that say the same thing in different words.
3. Test each reason alone: if it were false, would the others still carry the claim?
4. Treat linked reasons as a chain and judge it by its weakest link.
5. Check that each piece of support reaches the claim's full scope, not just part of it.
6. Say each warrant aloud; if you cannot, the step may be assumed rather than real.
7. Ask what the strongest objection is, then check whether the argument names and meets that one.
8. Do not let one weak line sink independent reasons that stand without it.
9. Give one verdict - holds, holds for a narrower claim, or does not hold as argued - with the strongest part, the weakest part and the repair.
10. Judge the reasoning, not the topic: a weak case for a claim is not a case against it.

• Meera's proposal: The chess club should meet in Room 4, because it is the quietest room on the corridor and it has the only tables big enough for six boards.
• Aarav's notice: In Class 9's survey, 26 of 30 students wanted a quiz club, so every student in the school will join it.
• Priya's plan: If the bake sale moves to the hall, more families will pass the stall, so we will raise twice as much.
• Tom's letter: Some say the music room would be too noisy at lunch, but the practice booths are soundproofed, so the corridor would hear nothing.
• Hannah's revised claim: The early library hours will probably help the forty early-bus students, though they may do little for anyone else.
• Kofi's letter: The swings need repairing - the park keeper's log lists three broken chains since June, and my friend once fell off one.

• Kavya argues that the reading club should meet weekly, not monthly, because members forget the book between meetings - and anyone who disagrees has never read a book.
• Farhan's case: House points should count attendance at clubs, because points already reward sport and music, and clubs ask for the same weekly commitment.
• Tenzin's note: Either the bus stop gets a shelter, or students will keep missing the bus every time it rains.
• Oliver concedes: It is true that a longer lunch would shorten the last lesson by ten minutes.
• Grace's claim: Since the new timetable began, science fair entries have fallen, so the timetable caused the fall.
• Lucia's proposal: The community garden should add a tap near the beds, because volunteers carry water 200 metres from the hall, the gardener Mr Okafor says the beds dry out by noon, and the tap would cost less than the hoses bought each year.

Figures that persuade

A figure of speech in a persuasive text always makes a claim, even when it sounds like a picture. "Our team is a family" claims that teammates owe each other something. "Run on clouds" claims that a trainer feels unusually soft. To judge the figure, say that claim plainly and then ask the four questions of it.

This is the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - run on the plain claim inside the figure: the figure is judged by what is left when its picture is taken away.

Some figures do more than decorate a claim: they argue by likeness. An analogy says "this is like that, so what is true of that is true of this". The likeness is the warrant, and it has to hold at the point that matters.

Notice three things.

First, the figure's strength should match the evidence under it. A hyperbole that stands on a timed count is a fair way to make a point vivid; the same hyperbole with no count behind it asks the listener to accept a measurement nobody took.

Second, a figure can be fair and still unequal to its job. "Like a seatbelt" holds only as far as the risk is real. Judge where the likeness holds and where it stops, not just whether it is striking.

Third, the genre sets what a figure owes. A poster for a bake sale may promise "the best brownies in the galaxy" because nobody reads it as a claim to test. A proposal to the school council that uses the same kind of line in place of a cost figure is asking to be judged as an argument, and it has not earned the verdict. The sound and rhythm of these lines belong to ch24, and patterns of three and paired opposites as structures belong to ch15; here only their persuasive work is judged.

Picture every figure as a wrapped parcel handed to the audience. The wrapping is the image - the heart, the cage, the clouds - and it is what makes people reach out for the parcel. Your job is to unwrap it before you accept it. Inside you find one of four things: a real reason, a feeling the size of that reason, nothing at all, or a different claim from the one the label promised. You do not refuse parcels because the paper is beautiful. You refuse the ones that are empty, or that hold something you never agreed to take.

This section joins two chapters at the exact point where they meet. Chapter 26 taught you to name a figure and say what picture or feeling it adds; it never asked whether the figure persuades fairly. In this chapter, S24 gave you ethos, pathos and logos, S29 judged loaded words as a strategy, and S30 asked how strongly a claim should be stated. Here a figure is treated as a claim with an image around it and judged by all four questions. S36 runs the same test across speeches, editorials, adverts and posts; S37 and S39 apply it to public-domain speeches studied in full; and S40 asks you to place a figure on top of a real reason of your own.

Here is the hard case: a figure that carries a real reason and still claims more than that reason can bear. Nandini speaks against a plan to cut the weekly reading period to make room for an extra maths lesson. "Cutting the reading period to help maths is like taking the wheels off a bicycle to make it lighter. Our maths teacher, Mr Rao, told us that most of the marks we lose are on word problems we misread, not on the arithmetic. Some say maths needs the time more. But a lesson spent reading is a lesson spent learning to read the questions." Name it: an analogy, and a striking one. Say it plainly: removing the reading period would remove the very thing that makes the maths work, so the change defeats itself. Check what is left. The teacher's observation is real support, from someone placed to know, and it gives the analogy a warrant: reading does feed maths. The counter is named and answered with that same point. So the figure is not empty. It carries a reason the speech supports. Now test where the likeness holds and where it stops. A bicycle without wheels does not work at all. A maths class without a weekly reading period still works; on the teacher's evidence it may simply lose some marks on word problems. The analogy states the warrant at full strength - total failure - when the evidence supports only a partial loss. So what is the fair verdict? Not "a trick": the analogy sits on a real reason and the counter is met. Not "strong because memorable": the image claims more than the teacher said. The figure carries a real reason, but it is larger than its evidence. The repair is a figure the size of the evidence - "like letting the air out of the tyres" - or the same figure with stronger evidence beneath it, such as the class's own marks on word problems. And notice what the verdict does not say. It does not say the reading period should stay or go. It says how much this figure is entitled to claim.

The word rhetoric comes from the Greek rhetor, a public speaker. In the fourth century BCE, Aristotle's Rhetoric named the three appeals this chapter uses - ethos, pathos and logos - and in its third book it also discusses style, including metaphor. From the start, the study of persuasion treated figures as part of the argument, not as ornament laid on top of it. One of the most famous openings in the history of speeches shows a figure doing its work before any argument begins. At the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, Swami Vivekananda began with the words "Sisters and Brothers of America". The form of address treats a hall full of strangers as family. It won long applause before he had made any argument at all - ethos and pathos earned in five words. Run the plain-words test on it. In plain words, the greeting says: I come to you as kin, not as a stranger. It asks for nothing that needs evidence; it opens the listeners to hear what comes next. That is a figure doing a fair and limited job - earning a hearing - rather than standing in for a reason.

The four jobs are a working scale for this chapter, not an official classification, and one figure can do two jobs at once: carry a real reason and tilt the frame a little, as an analogy often does. The plain-words test judges the claim inside the figure, not the figure's beauty. A figure can be fresh, well made and still empty, or tired and still carry a sound reason. Genre matters. A ceremonial speech, a bake-sale poster and a council proposal owe different amounts of evidence, so judge each against what it is trying to do. The Gettysburg Address is quoted only in short phrases from the Bliss copy, one of the five manuscript copies in Lincoln's hand. Vivekananda's address is quoted only in its opening words; Nehru's 1947 midnight speech appears only in the practice questions, described and never quoted. All other speeches, slogans, products and people in this section are invented for practice.

1. Name the figure in one line, then move on - naming is not judging.
2. Say what the figure claims in plain words before you react to the picture.
3. Look for the reason under the plain claim somewhere in the text, and write "none" if there is none.
4. Ask whether the figure carries a reason, adds a fitting feeling, stands in for a reason, or tilts the question.
5. For an analogy, find the point where the likeness must hold, and check that it holds there.
6. Match the figure's strength to the evidence: "forever" needs a count beneath it; "like a seatbelt" needs a real risk.
7. Notice a metaphor that decides the dispute - a cage, a lifeline, a ladder - before any reason is given.
8. Judge a rhetorical question by the answer it assumes, and ask whether the text earns that answer.
9. Do not mark a figure down for being vivid when a real reason sits under it.
10. Judge by genre: a ceremony, a poster and a proposal owe different amounts of evidence.

• From Meera's speech to the class council: The library is the heart of the school - every club meets there, and about three hundred books go out each week.
• Aarav's poster for the bake sale: Our brownies are so good they will make you forget your own name!
• From Kavya's speech: Is a ten-minute recess really enough time for anyone to eat, rest and play?
• Tom's letter to the magazine: The new homework timetable is a cage around our evenings.
• Emily's flyer: The community garden is thirsty - the beds dried out twice in June - and it is asking for one hour of your Saturday.
• From Kofi's speech at the residents' meeting: Rain or roof - choose now, or stand soaked at that bus stop forever!

• From Ishaan's speech to the football team: Our team is a family, and a family never leaves anyone on the bench.
• Swami Vivekananda began his address at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 with the words "Sisters and Brothers of America".
• From Nandini's speech: A helmet rule is like a seatbelt rule - a second's effort against a serious injury - and the school nurse, Mrs D'Souza, has treated four head bumps from cycling falls this term.
• Hannah's slogan for the reading club: Read more, worry less, sleep better!
• The Gettysburg Address of 1863, in the Bliss copy, closes on the resolve that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
• Yuki's poster for the chess club: Quiet minds, loud moves - twelve boards, free coaching from Mr Sato, every Thursday in Room 4.

Spotting bias in a source

A source is biased when its maker's interest or point of view tilts what it says, what it chooses to include, or what it leaves out. Bias is a reason to read a source carefully. It is not, on its own, a reason to believe the source is wrong.

This is Step 2 of the Argument Check - Support - asked about the source as well as the evidence: Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge, with each source given the weight it has earned.

Bias does not always look the same. Four shapes turn up again and again, and each one is allowed for differently.

Notice three things.

First, bias is not lying. The home captain can report every foul truthfully and still give a lopsided picture, simply because a player in the middle of a match sees and remembers the fouls that hurt their own side. Calling the captain a liar is both unfair and unhelpful; the useful move is to find what the other side saw.

Second, an interest is a reason to check, not proof of falsehood. Saying "the club wrote it, so the meeting time must be wrong" rejects a claim because of who made it - a form of ad hominem. The fair move is to ask whether the line is one the source is placed to know and could be caught out on.

Third, some lines deserve more weight because of the source's interest, not less. When the canteen's own notice admits that the new pasta ran out twice, or the captain admits a lucky goal, the source is saying something that costs it. Admissions against interest are among the most trustworthy lines a biased source contains. And when two sources with opposite interests agree on a fact, that fact is about as safe as a fact can be.

Whether a single word in a source is loaded or neutral is ch22's question; here the question is what the source as a whole is placed to know and has reason to tilt.

Picture a bowl in the game of bowls. It is built lopsided on purpose, so it always curves to one side as it rolls. That curve is called its bias. A good player does not throw the bowl away, and does not pretend it rolls straight. They study which way it leans, aim a little wide to allow for the curve, and the bowl still reaches the jack. A biased source is that bowl: learn which way it leans, aim off for it, and it can still carry you to the truth.

This section adds the source to the whole-argument judgement of S31. Earlier you weighed evidence by type (S22) and strength (S13), met the testimonial (S14) and the expert who is or is not placed to know (S22), and saw loaded language used as a strategy (S29). Here the question moves one step back: before weighing what a line says, ask who is saying it and what they gain. S34 then puts two openly one-sided sources - two debate teams - in the same room. S36 runs this check across speeches, editorials, adverts and posts, S38 asks you to run it fast, and S40 asks you to allow for your own bias when you build an argument.

Here is the hard case: two interested sources that contradict each other, a claim that may be true, and a decision that has to be made. The school is choosing a notebook supplier for next year. Ferngrove Stationers sends a leaflet: "Switch to Quillory notebooks. 90 gsm paper - the weight is printed on every pack. Our price is 40 rupees a notebook, 10 less than you pay now. Teachers who tried them call them the best notebooks on the market." A week later the school's current supplier, Pinecroft Paper, sends a letter: "Quillory spines split within a month. Stay with us for quality you can trust." Run the four questions, and ask of each source who made it and what it is placed to know. Claim: switch to Quillory. Clear and debatable. Support from Ferngrove: the paper weight is printed on the pack, so it can be checked in a minute, and a shop that printed a false weight would be caught at once. Keep it. The price is the shop's own price, which it is placed to know; but the comparison - "10 less than you pay now" - depends on what the school pays Pinecroft, which the school office can check. The teachers' praise is a testimonial chosen by the seller: how many teachers tried them, and how many did not like them? Discount it until someone independent asks. Support from Pinecroft: the claim about split spines comes from a rival that loses a customer if the school switches. That interest does not make it false - but the letter gives no count, no example and no way to check. Discount it too, and ask the question it raises: do the spines last? Counter: neither source mentions what the other would. Ferngrove is silent on durability; Pinecroft is silent on price. So what is the fair verdict? Not "both are biased, so ignore both": that throws away a checkable weight and a checkable price. Not "Ferngrove's facts are true, so switch": the most important unknown, how long the notebooks last, is exactly what the interested seller left out. The fair verdict is that the case for switching holds for a narrower claim - Quillory is cheaper for the same paper weight, if the office confirms the prices - and that the decision should wait on one independent check: buy a class set of each for a term and count the split spines. Notice what allowing for bias did here. It did not decide which shop was honest. It sorted the checkable from the self-serving in both sources, found the fact both had reason to tilt, and named the test that neither could tilt.

The word bias came into English from French, where it meant a slant or an oblique line. One of its earliest English uses was in the game of bowls, for the lopsided build of a bowl that makes it curve as it slows down. Only later did the word come to mean a leaning of the mind. That history holds the whole lesson of this section. A biased bowl is not a broken bowl. Players expect the curve, read which side the bias is on, and aim to allow for it. Bowls is still played this way: the bias is part of the game, not a fault in the equipment. A second word tells the same story. Partial, in the sense of favouring one side, comes from the Latin pars, a part. A partial source is one that sees, or shows, only part of the picture. Its part may be perfectly accurate; the trouble is the missing rest. And here is something certain about your own mind. People tend to notice, remember and trust evidence that fits what they already believe, and to look harder for flaws in evidence that does not. Psychologists call this confirmation bias. It means the most important source to allow for is often the reader. When a one-sided report agrees with you, that is exactly the moment to run the three questions on it.

Every source has a point of view, so "is it biased?" is rarely the useful question. Ask instead whether its interest could have tilted the particular line you are relying on. An interest is a reason to check a claim, never by itself a reason to reject it. Rejecting a line only because of who wrote it is a form of ad hominem. "Placed to know and could be caught out" makes a line more trustworthy, not certain. Records can be mistaken, and a source can be honest and still wrong. Choosing what to include is not always unfair. A club's flyer is meant to show the club at its best, and readers know that; the problem comes when a one-sided source is presented, or relied on, as if it were the whole picture. Whether a single word is loaded or neutral belongs to ch22 Tone & Register. Every club, shop, product, survey and report in this section is invented for practice.

1. Before weighing a line, ask who made the source and what they gain if you believe it.
2. Sort each line: placed to know and could be caught out, or something the interest would make it say anyway.
3. Keep checkable facts about the source's own business: its times, prices, scores and records.
4. Discount praise, comparisons and predictions that serve the source, until something independent supports them.
5. Give extra weight to an admission against interest; a source rarely invents its own fault.
6. Ask what a source with the opposite interest would add, and look there for the missing facts.
7. For a survey or a test, ask who chose the people asked and who ran it.
8. Look for a second source without the same stake, and trust most the facts that opposed sources agree on.
9. Never reject a line only because of who wrote it; that judges the source's motive, not the claim.
10. Run the same three questions on sources you agree with; your own leaning is a bias too.

• Aarav reads the Chess Club's own flyer: "Meetings are in Room 4 every Tuesday at 3.30, and beginners are welcome."
• Meera notices that the same flyer goes on: "Chess is the best club in the school."
• Kavya reads the juice stall's sign: "Nine of the ten tasters we invited preferred Bramblefizz."
• Tom says: "The match report was written by our captain, so nothing in it about the game can be trusted."
• From Emily's match report as team captain: "We were lucky with our second goal - their keeper had slipped."
• Kofi's note: The leaflet comes from the shop that sells the notebooks, so I checked its price against the school office's own list, and the price matches.

• Ishaan reads the canteen's notice: "In our survey at the counter, 90 percent of students who bought the new pasta said they liked it."
• Priya finds a line in the Drama Club's recruiting poster: "Join Drama, not that dusty chess corner."
• Nandini writes: "It's the captain's account, so I'll keep the score and the scorers, which the referee's sheet confirms, and treat 'we deserved to win' as one side's view."
• Grace reads the Pebbleton Sports leaflet: "Featherbound trainers are the most comfortable trainers ever made."
• Oliver notices that the community garden group's own flyer says: "Our beds may supply some of the canteen's herbs in a good summer."
• Yuki notes: "The Drama Club and the Chess Club both say the hall timetable gives Drama the hall on Tuesdays."

How a formal debate is built

A formal debate is an argument shared between two teams under rules. A motion states the claim. The proposition argues for it and the opposition against it. Neither team chooses its side, and neither wins by being right in general: a team wins by making arguments that survive the other side's answers.

Each speech is the Argument Check run aloud: the motion is the Claim, each case brings Support and Warrant, rebuttal is the Counter, and the adjudicator does the judging.

Two ideas hold the structure together: the burden that the motion's wording sets, and the clash between the cases.

Notice three things.

First, the motion's wording is a contract. A proposition that argues only "online is useful" has not proved "online only". An opposition that argues "print is nice" has not answered "print is too costly to keep". Read the motion word by word before deciding what either side must show.

Second, debates are won on clash. Where the two cases meet - staffing, cost, demand - the adjudicator asks who had the better of that exchange. A point that is never answered is usually treated as standing, so ignoring the other side's best argument is far more dangerous than losing a small one.

Third, speakers argue the side they are given. A debater who opposes longer library hours in the hall may support them at home. That is not insincerity; it is practice at stating a case you do not hold as strongly as its best supporter would, which is exactly what makes your own rebuttals fair.

How a speaker sounds belongs to ch28 Voice & Style, and how a written case is assembled to ch30; this section is about the structure the arguments move through.

Picture a rope bridge being built from both banks of a river at once, one plank per speech. The motion is the river the bridge must cross. Each proposition plank pushes out from one bank; each opposition plank tests the planks already laid, and pulls out any that do not hold. Rebuttal is the testing; extension is a new plank. The reply speeches lay no new planks at all: they walk the bridge and report which planks held. The adjudicator decides whether the proposition's span reached the far bank.

This section turns the whole-argument judgement of S31 into a contest. You built claims (S21), named the strongest opposing point (S25), rebutted without dismissing (S26) and named the fallacies that tempt a speaker under pressure (S27, S28). In S33 you allowed for a one-sided source; here both teams are openly one-sided, and the adjudicator must allow for both. S35 moves the same structure onto paper - a thesis, reasons, a counter-argument paragraph and a conclusion - and S38 and S40 ask you to argue an assigned side quickly and then defend your own.

Here is the hard case: a debate in which the side with the better evidence loses, and a reply speech that tries to rescue it. Motion: "This house would extend the school library's hours." The proposition defines it as opening until 5.30 on school days instead of 4. Proposition 1, Kavya, gives a survey: 61 of 80 students in Classes 9 and 10 said they would use the library after 4. Opposition 1, Ishaan, accepts the definition and does not dispute the survey, but argues that the library has no staff after 4, and that the only way to staff it would be to close it at lunch. Proposition 2 repeats the survey with new examples of students who would benefit. Opposition 2 extends: lunchtime closure would hurt the students who use the library most, those without quiet space at home. Proposition 3 says the staffing worry is "exaggerated". Then, in the proposition's reply, Kavya announces for the first time that six Class 12 volunteers could run a rota. Run the adjudicator's questions. What were the clashes? Two: demand (do students want it?) and workability (can it be staffed without harm?). Who won demand? The proposition, clearly: a solid survey, never disputed. But the opposition conceded it, so winning it moves the debate less than it seems. Who won workability? The opposition. The staffing point was raised in the first opposition speech and extended in the second. The proposition answered it with "exaggerated" - a contradiction, not a reason. The volunteer rota is a real answer, but it arrived in the reply speech, where the opposition had no chance to test it. In this model, it cannot be credited. Which clash matters more? The motion asks the proposition to show that extending the hours is good and workable. Demand without staffing shows a wish, not a plan. Workability decides it. So the fair decision goes to the opposition - and it is fair even if the adjudicator privately believes the library should open later, and even if Kavya was the most fluent speaker in the room. The feedback writes itself: bring the rota in the second proposition speech, where it could have been tested and believed. Notice what this decision is not. It is not a ruling that the library should keep its hours. It is a ruling on which arguments survived this debate.

The word debate comes from Old French debatre, "to fight", built from de- and battre, "to beat" - the same battre that gives English the word battle. Yet a formal debate tames the fight into rules: fixed turns, a stated motion, and a judge who rewards reasons rather than force. Indian learning had its own rules for this long ago. In shastrartha, the tradition of formal learned debate, a debater was expected first to state the opposing view - the purvapaksha - fairly and in full, and only then to give their own conclusion, the siddhanta. The opponent's case came first, in its strongest form. That order is the heart of good rebuttal. A speaker who can state the other side's argument so well that the other side would accept the summary has earned the right to answer it. A speaker who cannot has usually answered a straw man. The phrase "This house" in a motion also tells a story: it borrows the language of a parliament, where the members in the room are spoken of as the house. A debating room is set up as a small assembly that must decide a question by hearing both sides.

Real debating formats vary widely: team sizes, speech lengths, whether speakers may interrupt with brief questions, the names of the speeches and the exact rules about new material all differ. This section's model is one common pattern, described generically, not the rulebook of any competition. "An unanswered point usually stands" is a working rule, not an absolute one. A point that is plainly weak may fail without an answer, and adjudicators weigh how important each point is. Winning a debate does not settle the question in the world. A debate decides which arguments survived one room on one day. How a speaker's voice sounds belongs to ch28 Voice & Style; assembling a written argument belongs to ch30. Every motion, speaker, survey and rota in this section is invented for practice.

1. Read the motion word by word and say what it requires the proposition to show; words like "only" and "all" raise the burden.
2. As first proposition, define the motion as an ordinary listener would expect, with a clear and debatable burden.
3. As opposition, either accept the definition or challenge it once, briefly and with a reason, then debate.
4. Begin every speech after the first by answering what the other side has just said.
5. Rebut by naming the point and giving a reason it fails, never by denial alone.
6. State the other side's argument at its strongest before you answer it; if they would not accept your summary, you are rebutting a straw man.
7. As a second speaker, add a new argument; do not repeat your partner in new words.
8. Find the other side's best argument and answer it; an unanswered point is usually treated as standing.
9. In a reply speech, name the main clashes, say who won each and weigh them; bring nothing new.
10. Judge, and expect to be judged, on the arguments made in the room - not on your own view of the motion, and not on fluency alone.

• From Aarav's opening speech for the proposition: "We define extending the hours as opening until 5.30 on school days, instead of closing at 4."
• From Meera's speech for the opposition: "They say students want somewhere to work after 4, and we agree - but the library has no staff after 4, and they have not said who will supervise."
• Rohan, for the opposition: "The proposition wants the library open all night, every night."
• Tom, second speaker for the proposition: "Their only objection was staffing. Mrs Iyer, the librarian, has a rota of six Class 12 volunteers ready to cover 4 to 5.30."
• Emily, for the opposition: "The first proposition speaker only wants longer hours because they never finish their homework on time."
• Yuki, adjudicating: "The proposition won the clash on demand, but the staffing point was raised early and never answered with a reason, and the motion needs the hours to be workable - so the debate goes to the opposition."

• Ishaan, for the proposition: "Either we replace sports day with a games week, or students who are not athletes will go on being left out."
• Priya, opening for the proposition: "We do not claim a games week suits every student; we claim it includes more of them than one day of races does."
• Nandini, second speaker for the opposition: "Our first speaker showed the cost. I add a new point: a games week takes five days of lessons, where sports day takes one."
• Grace, third speaker for the proposition: "The opposition is just wrong, and everyone here knows it."
• Oliver, for the opposition: "If sports day becomes a games week, next it will be a games month, and soon there will be no lessons at all."
• Kofi's reply for the opposition: "Picture the Class 6 runner who has trained all term for one race. The proposition never answered why that day should go."

Outlining an argumentative essay

An argumentative outline is the Argument Check laid out in order before you draft. Every line is a sentence that could be wrong: a thesis to be defended, reasons that support it, evidence under each reason, the warrant that joins them, the strongest objection, and an answer to it.

Each row is one question of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - placed in the order an essay will use it, so the judging is done before the drafting. Turning the outline into finished paragraphs, with an introduction, linking and revision, is ch30's work (Putting It All Together); this section builds only the outline that makes the claim defensible.

The parts are fixed; their order is a choice. Here are three common shapes for the same essay.

Notice three things.

First, every shape contains the same parts. Choosing an order is a judgement about the reader; leaving a part out is a gap in the argument. No order is the one correct form, so long as the strongest objection is named and answered.

Second, reasons should be independent where they can be. Test each one: if this reason were false, would the others still support the thesis? If two reasons only work together - more families pass the hall, so more will buy cakes - outline them as one chain under one reason, and give the weakest link its own evidence.

Third, evidence belongs to one reason. The outline shows at once when a reason has no evidence under it, or when one survey is being asked to prove three different reasons. Two reasons with real evidence beat four that share one number; more reasons only make a stronger essay when each one adds support the others do not.

Picture an engineer's plan for a footbridge, drawn before any concrete is poured. The far bank is the thesis: the place the bridge promises to reach. Each reason is a pier. The evidence is the footing under each pier, and the warrant is the beam that joins pier to deck. The counter-argument is the heaviest load an inspector will drive across. The conclusion is the sign on the far side stating what weight the bridge carries - and no more. A weak pier is far cheaper to fix on paper than in the river.

This section arranges tools you already own. S21 built a claim worth arguing, which here becomes the thesis. S22 weighed types of evidence, S23 named the warrant, and S25 and S26 taught honest concession and a rebuttal that engages. S31 judged a whole argument, and S34 laid the same parts out as debate rounds. Here they become a written plan, in order, tested before drafting. S36 runs the same moves across other media, S38 asks you to outline fast under exam conditions, S40 asks you to build and defend your own, and ch30 assembles the finished essay.

Here is the hard case: an outline where the honest counter-argument partly wins. Nandini's thesis is "The chess club should move from Friday afternoons to Tuesday lunchtimes." Reason 1: on Fridays, 11 of the 20 members leave early for the late bus - the club register shows it for every week this term. Reason 2: the Tuesday lunch slot in Room 4 is free. Both reasons have evidence, and both are independent. Now the counter. The strongest objection is not "some people dislike chess"; it is this: a tournament-length game takes about an hour, and lunch is forty minutes. Nandini checks, and the objection is true. There are three ways to outline it. One: leave the objection out. The outline looks cleaner, and every member who plays in tournaments will notice the silence. Two: answer it weakly - "games could just go faster". That is a reply, not an answer; it ignores why games are long. Three: concede the point and let it change the thesis. The fair outline takes the third route. Concession: "lunch is too short for a full tournament game". Answer: "so the weekly practice - openings, puzzles and short games - moves to Tuesday lunch, and the monthly full-length match stays on a Friday, when the eight tournament players can stay". Revised thesis: "Weekly chess practice should move to Tuesday lunchtimes." Notice what happened. The counter paragraph did not weaken the essay; it found the version of the claim the evidence can actually carry. That is the outline's real job: to discover, before drafting, what you can defend.

The word essay comes from the French essai, "a trial" or "an attempt", which goes back to a Late Latin word, exagium, meaning "a weighing". An argumentative essay is a weighing in exactly that sense: reasons on one side, the strongest objection on the other. The word thesis is Greek, meaning "a setting down" or "a placing": the claim you set down and then defend. The outline itself is very old. The Nyaya tradition of Indian logic set out an argument in five members: pratijna, the proposition; hetu, the reason; udaharana, the example with a general rule; upanaya, applying the rule to this case; and nigamana, the conclusion. Its classic example: the hill has fire, because it has smoke; wherever there is smoke there is fire, as in a kitchen; this hill has such smoke; so the hill has fire. Set beside this section's plan, the proposition is the thesis, the reason is the reason, the general rule is the warrant, and the conclusion restates exactly what has been shown. And shastrartha, the Indian tradition of formal learned debate, asked a debater to state the opposing view - the purvapaksha - fairly and in full before giving their own conclusion, the siddhanta. That is the counter-argument paragraph, done first and done honestly.

The five-part outline is a common, reliable plan, not the only correct one. The counter-argument can come first, last, or alongside each reason, as long as the strongest objection is named and answered. Two or three reasons is usual, not a rule. One strong reason with real evidence beats three weak ones; a reason that adds nothing new should be cut, not counted. A warrant does not always need its own sentence in the finished essay, where it may be obvious from context. It does need a line in the outline, so that you know it is there and can check it. This outline plans the argument only. A paragraph's shape is ch27's (Paragraph Architecture), and introductions, linking and the drafting and revising of whole pieces are ch30's (Putting It All Together). Exam formats differ; this section describes no particular paper or marking scheme. Every scene, name and number here is invented for practice.

1. Write the thesis first, as one sentence a sensible reader could disagree with.
2. Make it specific: who, what, when, and how much.
3. Write every outline line as a claim, never a topic label.
4. Give each reason its own checkable evidence, written under it.
5. Write the warrant for every reason, even if the essay later leaves it implied.
6. Test each reason alone: if it were false, would the others still carry the thesis?
7. Merge reasons that say the same thing, and cut any reason with nothing under it.
8. For the counter, find the objection a doubtful reader would raise first, and state it so its holder would agree.
9. Outline both halves of the counter paragraph: the concession and the answer - and let a strong objection narrow the thesis if it must.
10. Write a conclusion that claims what the reasons showed, with no new evidence and no bigger promise.

• Meera's outline, Reason 1: The courtyard stands empty - the caretaker's log shows it was unlocked only twice last term.
• Ishaan's outline, warrant under Reason 2: Real beds hold water through the day, which is exactly what the windowsill trays could not do.
• Kavya's outline, Counter: Some will ask who waters the garden in the holidays, and that is a fair question.
• Tom's outline, Answer to the counter: The parents' rota already waters the front planters every holiday and has offered to add the new beds.
• Grace's outline, Reason 3: Plants are good for people, so the garden will raise the school's exam results.
• Mateo's outline, Conclusion: A student-run garden would put unused space to work for the science projects that need it.

• Rohan's outline for a canteen essay, Reason 1: The canteen menu really must change.
• Priya's outline, evidence under Reason 1: In Class 10's survey, 41 of 52 students said the queue made them miss part of lunch.
• Farhan's outline, evidence under Reason 2: My cousin says her school's canteen is much better.
• Oliver's outline, Counter: Some people think students should not be given any choice at all.
• Hannah's outline, Conclusion: A one-term trial of a second counter would probably shorten the queue for most of Class 10.
• Yuki's outline, Reason 2: Mrs D'Souza, the school nurse, says students who skip lunch come to her with headaches most afternoons.

The same moves, different media

Every piece of persuasion makes a claim and offers something in support of it, whatever form it takes. The medium decides how much of that support you can see, and where the claim is hiding. So the first move is the same everywhere: unpack the piece into a plain claim and its reasons, then judge it.

The four questions of the Argument Check - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - do not change from one medium to the next; only the unpacking does. How a figure is named is ch26's, whether a word is loaded is ch22's, and how a persuasive voice sounds is ch28's; this section asks whether the persuasion holds.

Here is one claim - "the school's library should stay open until 6 pm in exam weeks" - carried by four media, and what the check finds in each.

Notice three things.

First, the post is short and still fair, because its one reason is real and checkable. The poster is short and offers nothing to check. Length did not decide either verdict; support did.

Second, a medium excuses brevity, never absence. A post cannot hold a survey, but it can name one or point to it. A poster cannot argue a counter-point, but it need not pretend there is none. When a short piece leaves out what it could easily have pointed to, that is a gap, not a format.

Third, the pieces can work together. The poster's feeling is fair if a reader can follow it to the editorial's reasons. Judged alone, it gives no reason at all; judged as part of a campaign, it is an invitation to one. Say which you are judging.

Picture four parcels arriving at your door: a large box, a slim envelope, a gift with a ribbon and a picture on it, and a postcard. Each is wrapped differently, and the wrapping is designed to make you feel something before you open it. The Argument Check is the same pair of scissors for every one. You cut the wrapping, take out what is inside - the claim and its reasons - and weigh it on the same scale. Sometimes the plain envelope holds the most.

This section takes the Argument Check out of the essay. In Practice, S14 named the techniques adverts use; in Craft, S24 named the three appeals and S27 and S28 the fallacies. S31 judged a whole argument, S32 judged what a figure is used to do, S33 weighed a source's interest, S34 followed a debate and S35 outlined an essay. Here the same check runs on speeches, editorials, adverts and posts. S37 studies public-domain Indian speeches for their appeals, S39 reads one speech move by move, and S40 asks you to defend your own argument wherever it is heard.

Here is the hard case: an advert that is partly sound. A poster for ZoomFeet trainers reads: "Grip-Tread soles, tested on wet tiles in our own lab: 40 percent less slipping than our old model. Worn by the runners of the Riverside Athletics Club. Soon everyone at your school will have a pair." Unpack it. Claim: buy ZoomFeet trainers. Reasons: a grip test, a testimonial, and a crowd. Run the check on each. The grip test is specific and relevant - grip is exactly what a trainer should offer - and it is a comparison you could ask to see. But it was run by the seller, and it compares the new model with ZoomFeet's own old one, not with anyone else's. That is evidence, weakened by its source's interest and its narrow comparison, not worthless. The testimonial is relevant: runners know what they need from a shoe. But the poster does not say whether the club is paid to wear them. Relevant ethos, with a question a careful reader should ask. The crowd - "soon everyone at your school" - is a prediction offered as a reason to join. It is bandwagon, and it carries nothing. So what is the verdict? Not "just an advert, ignore it", and not "a fair argument". The poster holds for a narrow claim: the new sole grips better than the old one, by the maker's own test. It does not show that ZoomFeet grip better than other trainers, and the crowd line adds nothing. The fair reader keeps the checkable part, asks the two questions the poster left open, and drops the rest. That is exactly the verdict you would give an essay with one decent reason, one open question and one fallacy.

The word rhetoric comes from the Greek rhetor, a public speaker. For most of its history the study of persuasion was the study of speeches, made aloud to a crowd. Aristotle's Rhetoric, written in the 4th century BCE for speakers, named the three appeals - ethos, pathos and logos - and every medium since has used the same three. A poster's smiling face is ethos and pathos at once; a post's statistic is logos in twelve words. The word advertise comes, through French, from the Latin advertere, "to turn towards". An advert's first job is to turn your attention towards something, which is why so many say almost nothing and show a great deal. The word editorial comes from editor, from the Latin edere, "to put forth" or "to publish". An editorial is the publication putting forth its own view, which is why it is the one medium here with room for the full Argument Check - and why it has the least excuse when a part is missing. And the word persuade comes from the Latin suadere, "to advise" or "to urge". The root is about counsel, not pressure: in every medium, the fairest persuasion is still a kind of advice, with reasons attached.

A medium excuses brevity, not absence. A short piece may fairly leave out detail it points to; it may not fairly hide the fact that it has no support. Some pieces are meant to work together. A poster that sends readers to a full argument should be judged with it; say whether you are judging the piece alone or the campaign. Feeling, polish and repetition are not faults in themselves. A speech can repeat a sound reason so it is remembered; an image can carry real pathos for a real reason. The fault is when they stand where a reason should be. This section judges whether persuasion holds. Naming a figure is ch26's, judging whether a word is loaded is ch22's, and the sound of a persuasive voice is ch28's. Every speech, editorial, advert, product and post here is invented for practice; no real brand, organisation or person is described, and no claim is made about any real one.

1. Write the claim in one plain sentence, even if the piece never states it.
2. For an advert, start with the implied claim: buy this, choose us, join in.
3. List every reason, and mark which are stated and which are only implied.
4. Strip applause lines, images, music and share counts, and see what reasons remain.
5. Treat a share count or a like count as a measure of reaction, not of truth.
6. Ask whether a testimonial comes from someone placed to know, and whether they gain from saying it.
7. Ask who ran a test or a survey, and what it was compared against.
8. Allow a short piece its brevity, but flag what it could easily have pointed to and did not.
9. Expect more of an editorial: it has the room to meet the strongest objection.
10. Give the same kind of verdict in every medium - holds, holds for a narrower claim, or does not hold - and say why.

• From Kavya's speech at the residents' meeting: "I have run the garden's Saturday rota for four years, and every Saturday we turn families away at noon."
• From Aarav's editorial in the neighbourhood newsletter: "Some will say a Sunday opening disturbs a quiet morning, but the beds are behind the hall, 200 metres from the nearest house."
• Priya's post on the residents' page: "The garden's Sunday plan has been shared 400 times, so it must be right."
• A poster for ZoomFeet trainers: "Everyone in your class will be wearing them by summer."
• From Emily's speech at the sports-day assembly: "Picture the youngest runners, red-faced and gasping in the May heat."
• A poster for BrightBean juice: "Every carton lists its fruit content on the side - read ours, then read theirs."

• From Meera's editorial in the school magazine: "In last month's survey, 212 of 300 readers said they read the magazine on their phones."
• From Ishaan's speech to the debate club: "If we lose the music room at lunch, next it will be the art room, then the library, then every club we have."
• Rohan's post on the class page: "Since the new bus shelter went up, the stop is always crowded - the shelter is attracting crowds!"
• A poster for SnapStack building blocks: "The only blocks your child will ever need."
• Hannah's post on the school noticeboard page: "Library open till 6 this week for exam revision - times are on the school notice by the office."
• From Lucia's editorial in the neighbourhood newsletter: "Those who oppose the Sunday market are simply people who never leave their houses."

Indian rhetorical traditions

Two Indian traditions of reasoning are worth studying as structures. The Nyaya five-membered argument lays out every step from reason to conclusion, so each step can be tested. Shastrartha, the tradition of formal learned debate, asks a debater to state the opposing view (purvapaksha) fairly and in full before giving their own conclusion (siddhanta).

Each tradition is the Argument Check in another shape - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - and the judging still decides whether a well-built form holds.

Speeches belong to occasions, and two public-domain Indian speeches show how much the occasion decides what an appeal is for.

Notice three things.

First, an opening is not an argument. The 1893 greeting did its work before any claim was made, so asking for its evidence misreads it. What a judge can ask is what the goodwill was later spent on.

Second, a ceremonial address and a debate speech have different jobs. A pledge of service at a nation's founding does not set out to prove a contested claim; it asks its hearers to commit. The Argument Check still runs: the claim is a call to duty, and the question is whether the speech gives its hearers reasons and feeling that fit that call.

Third, studying a speech's moves is not taking its side. You can name the pathos of a midnight pledge or the ethos of a famous greeting with exactly the care you would give a case for longer library hours, and say nothing at all about the beliefs or causes behind them.

Picture a footbridge over a stream, built in five planks. The far bank is the conclusion. The first plank names where you are going, the second is the reason you can go, the third is a plank laid on solid rock - the general rule with its kitchen you can stand on - the fourth fixes this crossing to that rock, and the fifth lands you on the far bank. Before you cross, the shastrartha habit asks you to walk your opponent's bridge first and describe it truly. Applause from the bank is pleasant; it does not hold up a single plank.

This section brings back almost every Craft tool in another form. The udaharana is the warrant of S23, made visible; the purvapaksha is the concession of S25 at full strength, and the siddhanta is the rebuttal of S26; the opening and the ceremonial address are S24's ethos and pathos, read on great occasions. S34's formal debate and S35's essay outline share the shastrartha's order: the other side, then your answer. Next, S38 runs the Argument Check fast under exam conditions, S39 reads one public-domain speech move by move, and S40 asks you to defend your own argument - perhaps in five members, with the purvapaksha stated first.

Here is the hard case: an argument in perfect Nyaya form, with a fair purvapaksha, whose general rule holds most of the time but not in this case. Meera argues, in five members, that the school garden's tomato bed needs more water. Proposition: the tomato bed needs more water. Reason: its leaves are curling. Example with a general rule: wherever a tomato plant's leaves curl in dry weather, the plant needs water, as with the pots on the staff-room sill last summer. Application: these leaves are curling, and the weather has been dry. Conclusion: so the tomato bed needs more water. She then states the purvapaksha in full, as the gardener Mr Thomas would: "Leaf curl can also come from heat in the middle of the day, and watering more can rot the roots of plants that are already wet underneath." Her siddhanta answers it: she checked the soil a finger deep, and it was dry. Run the four questions. Claim: clear and specific. Support: curling leaves, a real and visible sign. Warrant: stated, with a checkable example - and here is the difficulty. The rule is not always true; heat alone can curl leaves. A judge who stops at "the rule has exceptions" would reject the argument. But look at what the purvapaksha did. By stating the strongest objection in full, Meera named the exception herself, and her siddhanta tested exactly that exception: dry soil rules out the wet-roots case. The application now carries two marks, curling leaves and dry soil, and together they fit the rule's reliable cases. So the fair verdict is that the argument holds - not because the form is old or tidy, and not because the rule is universal, but because the fourth member was made to fit and the strongest objection was met. Had she skipped the soil test, the same five members would have held only for a narrower claim: the bed may need water. The tradition gave her the structure; the judging still came from the checks.

The word rhetoric comes from the Greek rhetor, a public speaker, and Aristotle's Rhetoric, from the 4th century BCE, named the three appeals - ethos, pathos, logos - that this chapter has used throughout. It is easy to assume that the study of argument was born there alone. It was not. The Nyaya tradition worked out its own five-membered argument, and its shape holds a surprise for any student of essays. The proposition comes first and the conclusion comes last - and they say the same thing. "The hill has fire" opens it; "so the hill has fire" closes it. That looks like repetition, until you notice what has changed between them. The first time, the claim is only stated. The last time, it has been earned: a reason, a general rule with an example anyone can check, and an application to this case stand between them. A modern argumentative essay does the same thing when its conclusion returns to its thesis - and is judged by whether the paragraphs in between have earned the return. Shastrartha holds a second surprise. Its order puts the other side first. Before a debater may give their own conclusion, the opposing view is stated in full. Concession, which many writers treat as a risk, is here the price of being allowed to speak.

This section describes these traditions only as structures of reasoning and debate. It explains no doctrine, ranks no tradition above another, and takes no side on the beliefs or causes that any speaker served. The five-member summary here is the classic textbook outline. Scholars of Nyaya discuss many refinements; this section uses only the outline and its classic example. The speeches are quoted only where this section is certain: the opening words of the 1893 address. Nehru's 1947 speech is described, not quoted. Read the full texts from a reliable edition before quoting either in your own work. An old or respected form does not make an argument sound. It makes the steps visible, so they can be tested. Every school scene, name and argument here is invented for practice.

1. Rewrite an argument in the five members, one line each, before you judge it.
2. Map the members onto the check: proposition to claim, reason to support, example and rule to warrant.
3. Test the general rule in the third member: is it true in the cases that matter, and does the example really show it?
4. Test the fourth member: does this case really have the mark the rule needs?
5. Read the conclusion as the claim earned, and check that the middle members did the earning.
6. State the purvapaksha in full, in words its own supporter would accept.
7. Give the siddhanta only after answering the strongest version of the other side.
8. Name the ethos and pathos of an opening, and do not count applause as support for a claim.
9. Judge a ceremonial speech by the job its occasion sets, and say what that job is.
10. Study the moves, never the cause: name what a speech does, and keep your view of its beliefs out of the verdict.

• Priya's five-step case: The bus stop needs a shelter, because students stand in the rain; wherever people wait in the open in the rains, a shelter keeps them dry, as at the stop outside the clinic; our stop is in the open; so the bus stop needs a shelter.
• Swami Vivekananda opened his 1893 address in Chicago with "Sisters and Brothers of America", and the hall applauded before he had made any argument.
• Ishaan's purvapaksha: Those who want sports day kept in May say the weather is settled, the hall is free and families have already planned their leave around it.
• Grace's five-step case: The reading club is popular, because the room is crowded; wherever a room is crowded, its club is popular, as in the canteen; this room is crowded; so the club is popular.
• Oliver's purvapaksha: People who want the chess club to keep its Friday slot just want to stop everyone else having fun.
• Yuki's siddhanta: Having granted that a later start would shorten the evening, I conclude it is still worth it, because the morning bus runs only at 7.10 and a later start lets every bus student arrive on time.

• Nehru's midnight speech to the Constituent Assembly in August 1947 is remembered for its image of the nation waking at the midnight hour and its pledge of service.
• Kavya's application: Our tomato bed's leaves are curling, and the soil is dry a finger deep.
• Nandini's five-step case: The canteen should sell fruit at break, because the fruit sold out in the trial week; wherever a food sells out in a fair trial, there is demand for it, as with the samosas last term; the fruit sold out in a fair trial; so the canteen should sell fruit at break.
• Hannah's opening at the house assembly: Friends, I have sat where you sit, I have lost the relay you lost, and I am standing here because I want us to win it back.
• Tom's five-step case: The library should open earlier, because many students want it; wherever many students want something, the school should do it, as with the new lockers; many want earlier opening; so the library should open earlier.
• Mateo's debate: Before I answer, here is the case against a longer recess as its supporters make it - lessons would end later, buses would leave later, and younger students would tire.

Arguing under exam conditions

Arguing under exam conditions is the Argument Check run fast, against a task that has already chosen the topic and often the side. The skill is not writing faster; it is deciding faster, so that the writing time goes where an examiner will look.

Every exam argument is the Argument Check against a clock - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter, then judge - and the four-minute plan is that check written in the margin before the first paragraph.

Two things decide whether an examiner trusts a timed argument once its claim is fixed: the support it chooses, and the register it is written in.

Notice three things.

First, an invented statistic is worse than none. In a timed answer you have no sources, and an examiner knows it; a precise figure from nowhere reads as fabricated and takes your ethos with it. A clearly signalled illustration - "consider a student who..." - argues honestly from what anyone can picture.

Second, register here is an argument choice, not a style choice. A measured claim keeps a reader who disagrees still reading; a sneer tells them they are not the audience. The words themselves are ch22's subject; this section asks only whether they keep the argument trusted.

Third, the last five minutes belong to the check, not to polish. Read the conclusion beside the task. If the task said argue against and the conclusion has drifted to "both sides have a point", one sentence fixes more than any amount of tidier wording.

Picture a pilot before take-off on a tight schedule. The pilot does not skip the checklist to save time; the checklist is how the pilot saves time, because every check is quick and none is forgotten. Your four margin lines - Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter - are that checklist. The task is the flight plan: it names the destination, and no amount of skilful flying makes up for landing at the wrong airport. The final five minutes are the landing check: is this where the task said to go?

This section takes the whole of the chapter into the exam hall. S21's specific, debatable claim becomes the one-minute claim; S22 and S23 become the support and warrant lines of the plan; S25 and S26 become the two-sentence counter; S30's sense of how strongly to state a claim becomes register. S31's verdict is what an examiner gives; S35's outline is what the four-minute plan compresses. Next, S39 slows right down to read one public-domain speech move by move, and S40 asks you to build and defend an argument of your own - at your own pace, with this checklist already in your hands.

Here is the hard case: you are assigned the side you disagree with, and the strongest point belongs to the other side. The task says: "Argue for the motion: homework should be abolished for students below Class 9." You believe some homework helps. And the strongest opposing point is real - regular practice does fix skills. Three tempting moves fail. Switching sides in the conclusion - "so perhaps homework should stay" - answers a different task. Ignoring the practice point leaves the examiner's first objection unanswered. And quietly shrinking the motion - "homework should be abolished on Sundays" - is a dodge that changes the motion rather than arguing it. Run the check. Claim: the motion's side, stated exactly - set homework should be abolished below Class 9. Support: younger students' evenings are already taken by sleep, play and family time, and practice can happen in class. Warrant: if the practice homework gives can be given in class time, homework's main benefit survives its abolition. Counter: concede plainly that practice fixes skills - then answer that the motion abolishes homework, not practice, which moves into a guided in-class period. There is one fair narrowing open to you: defining the motion's terms reasonably. Defining homework as compulsory set work done at home is fair; it is what the motion means. Defining it as only Sunday worksheets is not. So the fair verdict on your own answer is this: you argue the side assigned, you concede its strongest objection at full strength, you answer it, and you never pretend the objection is weak. This is not insincerity. A debater assigned a side and a lawyer briefed on a case do the same thing openly: they argue the best honest case for a position, and the examiner judges the reasoning, not your private view.

The word examine comes from the Latin examen, which meant, among other things, the tongue - the pointer - of a balance. To examine something was first to weigh it, watching which way the pointer swung. That is a useful picture of what an examiner does with your argument. Your reasons go on one pan; the strongest objection goes on the other. A list of bare claims weighs almost nothing however long it is. A reason with its support and its warrant weighs a great deal, and an objection you have answered is moved off the other pan altogether. The word essay holds a second reminder. It comes from the French essai, a trial or an attempt. A timed essay is exactly that: one attempt, against the clock, to make a claim clear to a reader who did not already agree - which takes us back to argument itself, from the Latin arguere, to make clear. So the three words of the exam hall tell one story. You attempt (essay) to make something clear (argue), and the reader weighs it (examine). The four-minute plan is how you load the pan before you start.

Task formats differ from school to school and exam to exam. The command words used here - argue for, argue against, to what extent, discuss - are common patterns described generically, not any named board's paper or marking scheme; read your own task's instructions and follow them where they differ. Some tasks invite first-person writing, and some prefer an impersonal voice. Follow the task. The point here is measured claims and fair treatment of the reader, not a ban on any one pronoun. The four-minute plan is a working habit, not a rule; on a short task it may take two minutes, on a long one ten. Every task, scene, name and figure in this section is invented for practice.

1. Underline the topic, the side and the command word before you write anything.
2. Write the claim in one sentence that answers exactly the side the task names.
3. Plan in four margin lines: Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter.
4. Choose two or three developed reasons over a long list of bare ones.
5. Give each reason one piece of support and one sentence saying why it supports the claim.
6. Support with the task's own material or a clearly illustrative case, never an invented figure presented as real.
7. Name the strongest objection and answer it in two sentences, without changing sides.
8. State the claim at the strength the support allows, and keep the register measured.
9. Define the task's terms reasonably; never shrink the motion to dodge it.
10. Keep the last minutes to check the conclusion against the task's exact words.

• Aarav's opening, for the motion that the school day should include a reading period: Reading is very important in today's world.
• Meera writes, against nightly homework: Studies show that 93% of students are too tired to learn after doing homework.
• Rohan writes: Consider a Class 8 student who trains until six and must sleep by ten; an extra hour of homework comes straight out of reading or rest.
• Emily writes: Admittedly, a reading period takes twenty minutes from the timetable; but those minutes can come from the tutor period, which most classes leave unused.
• Oliver ends: Clearly, every single student in the country would be transformed by this reading period.
• Kofi writes: A daily reading period is likely to help weaker readers most, because they read least outside school.

• Kavya writes, for compulsory clubs: Either the school makes clubs compulsory or students will spend every afternoon on screens.
• Farhan concludes: For these reasons, the motion should be supported: a daily reading period costs twenty unused minutes and gives the weakest readers the practice they currently lack.
• Nandini writes: Opponents may say students already read at home; the borrowing figures printed in the task, however, show that a third of the class borrowed nothing all term.
• Grace writes: Everyone knows that a sports week would be better than a single sports day.
• Tom writes: As a student who has run in four sports days and helped organise one, I have seen the afternoon heat cut events short every year.
• Mateo writes: If the library opens on Saturdays, staff will be asked to work Sundays next, and soon the school will never close.

Close reading: a persuasive text in full

A close reading follows a persuasive text move by move and asks what each move does for the argument as a whole. Here are the moves of the Gettysburg Address, quoted only from the Bliss copy and described where it is not quoted.

The Argument Check runs on the whole text, not line by line: what is the claim, what supports it, what warrant connects the two, how does the text deal with the other view - then judge it against what the text was for.

Run the Argument Check on the speech as one argument.

Notice three things.

First, the shape is time: past (the founding), present (the war, the field, the ceremony), future (the task, the resolve). Each step makes the next one feel necessary. A close reader names the shape because the shape carries the reasoning.

Second, the devices serve the moves. The birth imagery of the opening - brought forth, conceived - returns at the end as a second birth, so the speech runs from birth to death to rebirth. The word dedicate comes back again and again, shifting from the founding, to the ground, to the living. The antithesis of what we say here against what they did here is the hinge of the turn. And the tricolon of the people, by the people, for the people makes the conclusion memorable after the reasons have done their work.

Third, the appeals blend. Ethos: the speaker says we, not I, and claims no credit; even the brevity is modest. Pathos: the dead are present on the field. Logos: the opening calls the founding a proposition, and the war a test of it - the language of a claim and its trial.

Picture an arch of stones. Each stone is a move: the founding, the test, the field, the concession, the turn, the resolve. On its own, no stone stands; lift one out and the arch falls. The closing line is the keystone at the top. It looks like the most important stone, and it is - but it only holds because every stone below it is in place. A close reader does not admire the keystone alone. A close reader names each stone and shows how it carries the next.

This section gathers the Master band. S31 judged a whole argument by all four questions at once; here the whole argument is a real text. S32 judged a figure by its job, and briefly met this speech's opening; here every figure is placed inside a move. S36 showed that a speech is judged by the same check as an editorial. S37 read public-domain Indian speeches for their appeals and structure. S40 asks you to build and defend an argument of your own, and ch30 assembles whole pieces.

Here is the hard case: is the closing line an argument, or only a feeling? Take it out of the speech. "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." On its own, it is a resolve with no reason attached. A strict reader could mark it "a claim with no reason", carried by the rhythm of the tricolon - a pattern this chapter has warned about since Discover. Now put it back. Before it come the founding premise, the test, the field, the concession and the turn. By the time the line arrives, its reasons have already been given: the country was founded on a proposition; the war is testing it; men died here for it; words cannot repay them; so the living must carry the work on. The closing line does not supply the reasons. It states the conclusion they have built, in a form that will be remembered. So the fair judgement is about placement. A line is judged by its place in the whole text. A tricolon that stands where reasons should be is a weakness; a tricolon that sums up reasons already given is the argument's last move, done well. There is a second hard edge. The warrant - that those who gave everything for a cause place a duty on the living - is a value premise, and the speech never proves it. Is that a missing warrant? No. A missing warrant is a step the argument needs and hides. This one is the speech's turn, said openly, and offered to an audience who can accept it or not. An examiner names it as the premise the argument rests on. Compare an invented case where the same move fails. A captain at the end-of-season dinner says: "The team trained in the rain all year, so we owe it to them to make the school buy new kit." The sacrifice is real, but it is now asked to support a specific purchase it cannot reach - kit needs its own reasons: cost, need, who pays. The move that holds in a speech of commitment overreaches when it is stretched to a policy.

The opening words do arithmetic. A score is twenty, so four score and seven is eighty-seven, and eighty-seven years before 1863 is 1776, the year the country's founders declared it independent. The word score comes into English from Old Norse skor, a notch: people kept count by cutting notches in a tally stick, often one notch for every twenty, and the word came to mean twenty itself. The word proposition is just as exact. It comes from Latin proponere, to put forward. In logic a proposition is a statement that can be tested and found true or false. The opening calls the founding a proposition; the next sentence calls the war a test of it. The speech frames its own history as a claim on trial. And the line "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here" is one of the most-remembered lines in English. The speech was short - under three hundred words, about two minutes - and came after the day's main oration by another speaker, which ran for about two hours.

The Gettysburg Address survives in five copies in Lincoln's own hand, and their wording differs slightly. This section quotes only from the Bliss copy, the one Lincoln signed, and only six passages of it; every other part is described in its own words and marked as description. Move names such as concession and turn are a reader's labels, not the speaker's. The section studies how the text works; it is not an account of the war or its causes, and it takes no side in them. Facts about the day are given only where they are certain. All other speeches here - the captain's, the garden opening, the farewells - are invented.

1. Read the whole text twice before you write a word, once aloud.
2. Name each move in order, in one line each: premise, stakes, fact, concession, turn, conclusion.
3. Find the turn - the moment the text changes direction - and say what it asks of the listener.
4. Attach every device to the move it serves; never list a device on its own.
5. State the claim the whole text builds, even when it is held back to the end.
6. Name the warrant, and say whether it is stated openly or hidden.
7. Ask how the text handles the other view, including the audience's own expectation.
8. Judge the text against its purpose - a speech of occasion is not a debate case.
9. Quote exactly from one named copy, and describe the rest in your own words.
10. Read for the move, not for a side: your verdict is on the reasoning, not the cause.
11. Judge a line by its place in the whole, not lifted out of it.

• From Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, 1863: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
• From Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, 1863: "It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this."
• From Meera's speech at the opening of the community garden: Two summers ago this was a car park full of broken glass, and the twelve families here cleared it by hand.
• From Rohan's farewell to the chess club: I am not the best player this club has had, and you will not remember my moves. You will remember that we turned up every Thursday.
• From Kavya's speech at the school library's dedication: The old library had forty shelves and no windows; this one has light, so let us fill it.
• From Amara's speech at the end of the robotics season: We lost the final, but we built the robot ourselves, and next year we build it better.

• From Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, 1863: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."
• From Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, 1863: "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
• From Ishaan's speech at sports day: Our house trained hardest, so our house deserves the cup, the new kit and a bigger budget next year.
• From Priya's farewell to the reading club: Clubs like ours always fade when the founders leave, so either you meet every week or the club is finished.
• From Nandini's speech at the bus stop shelter's opening: Our class counted for a fortnight: eleven people waited here in the rain each morning. From today, none of them will.
• From Mateo's speech at the music room's reopening: You can't make this room good by cutting a ribbon. The people who practised here through the leaks already did.

Independent performance

An independent argument is the Argument Check run forwards. Instead of asking the four questions of someone else's text, you answer them in your own - and then you ask them of your draft as an examiner would.

The Argument Check is the whole method here: Claim, Support, Warrant, Counter - then judge, first as the builder and then as the examiner of your own work.

A challenge usually attacks one part of the check. Name which part, and the fair answer follows.

Notice three things.

First, a fair defence starts by restating the challenge in its strongest form. If you answer a weaker version, you have answered nobody. The Indian tradition of formal debate makes this a rule: state the opposing view fully and fairly before your own.

Second, narrowing is not losing. A claim that shrinks to fit its evidence is a better claim. The line to watch is between narrowing in the open - "so my claim is now for early-bus students" - and quietly swapping in a claim no one disputes while pretending nothing changed.

Third, every dodge in the table is a fallacy the chapter has named: a louder claim, a bandwagon, an attack on the person, a slippery slope. Under pressure, the fallacies you can spot in others are the ones most likely to appear in your own mouth.

Picture a bridge you have designed yourself. Building it, you set each pier on solid ground - the claim, the evidence, the warrant - and you test it by imagining the heaviest load first. Then an inspector walks across and jumps on the weakest span. A good engineer does not shout that the bridge is fine, and does not walk away. The engineer finds the span, strengthens it or shortens the bridge to what the piers can bear, and says exactly what was changed.

This is the last of the chapter's forty sections and gathers all of them. Discover gave you claim and reason; Practice gave you evidence and the other side; Craft gave you the warrant, the appeals, concession, rebuttal, the fallacies and claim strength; Master gave you the whole-argument verdict, bias, debate, the essay outline and close reading. Here you use them together, on your own claim, under challenge. Chapter 30 then assembles whole pieces of every kind.

Here is the hard case: telling an honest narrowing from a quiet retreat. Nandini's first claim was: "The library should open at 7.50 for all students." The challenger says: "Your survey only asked the 90 early-bus students." There are three ways to reply. Reply one: "You're right. The survey covers early-bus students, so my claim is now that the library should open at 7.50 for the early-bus students, for a one-term trial, because they have nowhere to wait. If other students come, the trial will count them." The claim is smaller, still specific, still debatable - someone could reasonably say the staff time is better used elsewhere - and now fully supported. The change is announced. Reply two: "I never said everyone. All I'm saying is that libraries are good for students." The new claim is one almost no one disputes, so it cannot lose. But it is not the claim that was made, and the reply pretends nothing changed. This is a retreat dressed as a defence: the argument has given up its real claim without admitting it. Reply three: "Fine, but if we don't open early, students will stop reading altogether." The claim has not changed; a new, unsupported chain has been bolted on to frighten the listener. This is a slippery slope under pressure. So the test for a fair narrowing has three parts. Is the change said out loud? Is the new claim still debatable - something a reasonable person could deny? Does the evidence now reach it fully? Reply one passes all three. Reply two fails the first two. Reply three fails the third. One more edge. Sometimes the challenge is fatal: the evidence really does not support any version of the claim. Then the fair defence is to say so, withdraw, and keep what you learned. An examiner credits a writer who knows when a claim cannot stand far more than one who defends it with noise.

The words for what you do in this section carry their old meanings. Argument comes from Latin arguere, to make clear: an argument is meant to show, not to overpower. Rebut comes from an Old French word meaning to push back - and a rebuttal pushes a point back with a reason, not with volume. Debate comes from the Old French debatre, to fight, from de- and battre, to beat - which is exactly what a formal debate replaces with rules. And one of the oldest rules for defending an argument is Indian. In shastrartha, the tradition of formal learned debate, a debater first states the opposing view - the purvapaksha - fully and fairly, in its strongest form, before giving their own conclusion, the siddhanta. A defence that begins by restating the challenge better than the challenger did has kept that rule for centuries.

Every topic, survey, number and person in this section is invented: Nandini's library argument, the early-bus survey, Mrs Iyer's offer, and every challenger and reply. The numbers model how evidence works inside a scene and say nothing about any real school. Narrowing is not always the right defence; sometimes the challenge is wrong and the claim should stand, and sometimes it is fatal and the claim should be withdrawn. Assembling a whole multi-paragraph piece - outline, draft, revision - belongs to ch30; a paragraph's shape belongs to ch27.

1. Choose a small, real, debatable choice - something a reasonable person could deny.
2. Write the claim in one sentence, sized to the evidence you actually have.
3. Prefer two strong reasons with stated warrants to many reasons with gaps.
4. Match the evidence type to the claim: a count for how many, an expert for how, an example only to illustrate.
5. Let each appeal do honest work; never let feeling stand where a reason should be.
6. Name the strongest objection, not the easiest, and answer it.
7. Set the claim's strength to the evidence: hedge where it is thin, commit where it is solid.
8. Audit your draft as a stranger's: hunt for every fallacy and loaded word you can name.
9. Under challenge, restate the point fairly before you answer it.
10. Concede what is right; answer what is not with evidence or a warrant.
11. Narrow in the open, never in silence; withdraw a claim that cannot stand.
12. End by saying where your argument is strongest and where it is most open to attack.

• Nandini's claim: For a one-term trial, the school library should open at 7.50 on weekdays.
• Farhan's support: In our survey of the 40 chess club members, 31 said they would come at lunch if a room were free.
• Priya's warrant: Students choose fruit when it is the first thing they see, so moving the fruit to the front of the counter should mean more of it is eaten.
• Tom's reply to a challenge: You're right that the survey only asked Class 6, so my claim is now a longer recess for Class 6.
• Emily's draft: Coach Daniel, who has run sports day for ten years, says a mixed relay would take twelve minutes, not the forty some fear.
• Kofi's self-audit: My first draft said only selfish people would object to a music room rota; I cut it, because some object for fair reasons about practice time.

• Kavya, challenged on time: I only meant that reading is important.
• Ishaan, challenged on cost: You only say that because your house never wins house points.
• Aarav, challenged on homework-free Fridays: If we don't get Fridays off, everyone will burn out and the school's results will collapse.
• Oliver, challenged on the online magazine: That's a fair worry about screen time. The online issue would be in addition to the printed one, not instead of it.
• Hannah, challenged on the park swings: Lots of other parks have new swings, so ours should too.
• Lucia, challenged on the bus stop bench: The 14 people the residents' group counted each morning include six over seventy, and the stop has no shelter, so a bench is needed there first.