Card

A card is a single quote from an expert, with an associated tagline and source citation, intended for use as evidence in a round. It is sometimes less technically called a "piece of evidence", or occasionally an "evidence card".

The word "card" comes from the pre-Internet days of research, when quotes were often photocopied onto index cards. Today, evidence is generally stored in digital briefs created with word processors or special research software like Factsmith, but the word has survived as a concise way to refer to a single quote and its associated information.

Example card

 * Hegemony helps prevent nuclear war


 *  Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad (PhD, defense analyst at RAND, former US Ambassador to the United Nations), 1995 , "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War", The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, accessed December 21, 2012


 * "Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system. "

Card-cutting and formatting
Cards may contain material that is useful for context, but does not need to be read in-round. Debaters will often mark which portions of the card to read by underlining them. (Striking out the portions not to read is also used, but many debaters consider it unsightly.) It is generally considered acceptable to read only portions of sentences, or even string together several sentence fragments into one statement, provided that doing so does not change the meaning of the quote and the original complete text is available for examination. (Main article: Underlining)

Formatting of cards is highly variable from debater to debater, but several trends can be observed. Taglines are generally bold or otherwise emphasized, and citations are generally italicized. Some debaters prefer to shrink text that is not intended to be read to save space. There are also differences in the amount of unread material that is included for context; some debaters prefer to include only the immediate portion they intend to quote, while others may include multiple paragraphs.

The verbs "cut" or "block" are often used to describe the process of selecting quotes to put into a brief: e.g. "I finished cutting that article", or "I finished blocking that article."