Difference between revisions of "Structure of a Shell"

‘’’Ground’’’ – Ground is the type and quantity of arguments that you have access to. A topic that said “Racism is unjust” would have a lot of ground (arguments) for those affirming, for example, but no ground at all for those negating. Typically, ground is used to justify dropping arguments that have little to no legitimate responses against them, which make them hard to respond to. A common argument against [[PICs]] is that they leave the aff no ground since it is difficult to find reasons why they are bad.   

‘’’Reciprocity‘’’ – Reciprocity is the argument that your opponent has more routes to the ballot than you do. It is similar to ground insofar as it is about the division of arguments. An irreciprocal practice, for example, would be allowing yourself to run theory but at the same time preventing your opponent from running it. That way, you would have one more route than your opponent would.  

‘’’Strat/Time Skew‘’’ – Strat and time skew state that something your opponent did prevented you from answering or gave them a time advantage. If someone were to take ten minutes of prep instead of the usual four/five, then it would create a time skew because they would have more time to prepare than you.  

‘’’Limits‘’’ – Limits is an argument about the unfairness of having unlimited positions to run. A [[non-topical]] aff, for example, would be unfair under limits because if you didn’t have to follow the resolution you could choose any literature base you wanted.  

‘’’Predictability‘’’ – Predictability is how easy it is to predict some positions. It is commonly used with limits to criticize narrow plan affs since they can pick tiny areas of literature to create their affs.