Structure of a Shell

Structure of a Shell

See Responding to Theory to learn how to answer shells.

Interpretation/Violation

The interpretation (also known as “interp”) is the norm that debate should have, and the violation is why they fail to meet that norm.

An example of an interpretation is “Interp: Debaters must not run conditional advocacies” which criticizes the use of conditional advocacies in the round.

Interps for non-paragraph theory should be constructed with an actor (typically “debaters”) and should contain words like “must” instead of “should” or “ought.”

Violations are reasons why your opponent fails to meet your interp.

An example of a violation to the earlier shell is “Violation: Their [x] advocacy is a conditional advocacy.”

Violations can run from being just “Vio: They do” to screenshots and more detailed explanations. A good way to check violations if you’re unsure of them being legitimate is to check in cross-ex.

Standards

Standards are reasons why your model of debate (the interpretation) is good and why their model (the violation) is bad, typically justified by fairness and/or education.

When constructing standards, you usually want to point out why their model of debate is bad – why their type of argument is bad for debate. It’s not enough to say that it’s difficult to respond to their argument; you need to explain why their argument makes the round unfair or uneducational.

For example, a standard that said “Conditional advocacies are unfair because I don’t have any responses to their argument” is not persuasive while saying that “Conditional advocacies are unfair because it is impossible to predict which advocacy they are going to collapse to which splits the 1ar” is.

See Examples of Standards for more.

Common Standards

The following are some common examples of standards:

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.

Clash (Depth and Breadth) Critical Thinking Real World Phil ed/Topic ed Accessibility Shiftiness Jurisdiction

Voters

Voters explain how the theory shell should be evaluated. Some arguments for the voters include drop the debater (meaning that your opponent loses for failing to meet the interpretation), competing interps, and impact calculus (e.g. why fairness and education should be valued by the judge).