Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is a practice where instead of directly quoting evidence, debaters will put it into their own words. In many regions, and especially in Lincoln Douglas and Policy, paraphrasing is heavily discouraged.

Partial X-finals

Partials occur when a tournament does not have enough qualified teams to fill a complete elimination bracket. For example, if a tournament advances only teams with a 4-2 record to elimination rounds but 40 teams meet that threshold, the tournament might hold a partial double-octafinal where the top 24 teams receive a bye and the remaining 16 compete for the final 8 spots in the octafinals. This allows the bracket to be balanced while still honoring competitive cutoffs.

Policy

Policy (CX) is one of the original debate forms. It is a two-versus-two style and focuses on one topic for the entirety of the year. Policy tends to be the most technical of the three major U.S. debate styles.

Post-fiat

Post-fiat is an argument or impact that happens in the hypothetical world where the resolution is affirmed or negated.

Preferences

Judge preferences are used at tournaments to match Judges with rounds. Before the tournament, teams will rank the judges in the pool and then be matched with judges that they and their opponents share a similar ranking. Depending on the tournament there are variations to this model.

Pre-fiat

Pre-fiat is an argument or impact that results from something happening in the debate round itself. For instance, a more fair debate space is a pre-fiat impact.

Preflow

A preflow is the process of writing down the basic structure of your case on paper or a digital document before the round begins.

Preliminary Round

A preliminary round is an early-round debate in a tournament used to determine rankings, win-loss records, and speaker points before elimination rounds begin. All teams or debaters typically compete in 4-7 prelim rounds regardless of their performance, and the results are used to decide which entries “break” to out rounds.

Prep time

In every debate event debaters are given a certain amount of time to develope argument and talk with their partners. This can be used at any point within speeches.

Prerequisite

A prerequisite is when one impact comes before another. For instance, economic growth is a prerequisite to welfare expansion because we need a strong economy to be able to fund new programs. Interestingly, a lot of prerequisites can work both ways. A team could argue that welfare expansion is necessary to generate a strong economy.

Pro

The pro team supports the resolution.

Probability

Probability is how likely an event is to occur. For instance, nuclear war has a relatively low probability, while a minor cyberattack has a fairly high probability. A word of caution: while the probability of an event is tied to the real world, a debate around an unresponded argument would have an almost 100% chance of happening. So, if a team made an argument that there would be a nuclear war and the other team did not respond to it, the probability would be high.

Public Forum

Public Forum (PF) is a popular two-versus-two style of debate. Consisting of a Pro and Con side debaters use evidence and persuasion techniques to vote for their side of the resolution. Compared to other forms of debate, PF is considered to be slower with a higher emphasis on accessibility to the general public.

Reason For Decision

The reason for decision, is why the judge decided to vote for either the affirmative or negative team.

Rebuttal

Rebuttal speeches are used to attack the opponent's main arguments.

Recency

Recency is a weighing mechanism for evidence. If an article was published in 2025 and another was released in 2022 the 2025 one wins on recency.

Resolution

A resolution is another word for a topic. Most topics will begin with the word. For instance, Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase investment in domestic nuclear energy.

Reverse Voting Issue

A reverse voting issue is when a team argues that if the other person loses an argument that should be enough for them to lose the round. This argument is generally made against theory.

Reversibility

Severity can be viewed as the opposite of scope. It’s how much a person or thing was impacted. For instance, one person dying would have a high severity.

Scope

Scope is how many people or things are affected. For example, a million people losing internet access would have a large scope.

Second Affirmative Rebuttal

The second affirmative rebuttal is utilized to rebuild the affirmative and focus on the key arguments in the round.

Severity

Severity can be viewed as the opposite of scope. It’s how much a person or thing was impacted. For instance, one person dying would have a high severity.

Short-circuit

An argument is short-circuited when one impact with a shorter timeframe stops another from happening. For instance, a trade war shortcircuits economic growth because tariffs increase prices.

Silver Bid