make the audience believe that the best
way to secure lower taxes, better water, and improved streets would be
through his election, he would be making use of oral argumentation. If
he should do the same thing through newspaper editorials, he would be
using written argumentation.

Argumentation, then, may be carried on either in writing or orally,
and may vary from the informality of an ordinary conversation or a
letter to a careful address or thoughtful article.

What, then, is debate as we shall use the word in this work, and what
is the relation of argumentation to debate? The term "debate" in its
general use has, of course, many senses. You might say: "I had a
debate with a friend about the coming football game." Or your father
might say: "I heard the great Lincoln and Douglas debates before the
Civil War." Although both of you would be using the term as it is
generally used, you would not be using it as it will be used in this
book, or as it is best that a student of argumentation and debate
should use it.

The term "debate," in the sense in which students of these subjects
should use it, means _oral argumentation carried on by two opposing
teams under certain prescribed regulations, and with the expectation
of having a decision rendered by judges who are present_. This is
"debate" used, not generally, as you used it in saying, "I debated
with a friend," but technically, as we use it when we refer to the
Yale-Harvard debate or the Northern Debating League. In order to keep
the meaning of this term clearly in mind, use it only when referring
to such contests as these. In speaking of your argumentative
conversation with your friend or of the forensic contests between
Lincoln and Douglas, use the term "discussion" rather than "debate."

It is true that the controversy between Lincoln and Douglas conformed
to our definition of "debate" in being oral; moreover, at least in
sense, two teams (of one man each) competed, but there were no judges,
and no direct decision was rendered.

Since argumentation, then, is the art of producing in the mind of
someone else a belief in the idea or ideas you wish to convey, and
debate is an argumentative contest carried on orally under certain
conditions, it is clear that argumentation is the broader term of the
two and that debate is merely a specialized kind of argumentation.
Football is exercise, but there is exercise in many other forms.
Debate is argumentation, but one can als