The intention of this article is to be a comprehensive guide to educate a debater, particularly a novice with little debate experience, on how to use a LD (Lincoln-Douglas) brief. This includes a cross-brief comparison of all major LD briefs on the market, with price point and size comparisons, as well as advice that should be broadly applicable to any brief you use. After reading this article, even if you (sadly) do not prefer using Kankee Briefs, you should be well equipped

In an age of extreme spreading (speed reading) —particularly an age in which the spreading is of underhighlighted cards—the quantity and variety of arguments have generally been prioritized over their quality and intrinsic strategic viability. It’s hard not to notice, particularly among debate educators who have engaged with the activity in the long-term, that argument norms in the debate community change heavily over time in favor of quantity over quality. For those unfamili

*09-24-2025 Update: the previous version of the "Commonality Tracker" had errors after downloading. An updated version has been uploaded. Kankee Briefs has produced a lot of block files over our existence, a total of 1000+ pages to date, so I hope it’s not inaccurate to say that we know a thing or two about how to make one. This article is about a file called an “argument tracker,” which is a tool similar to flowing to assist you with creating block files, tracking what argum

This article is the fourth of four articles in regard to how to set up your new debate season and back-to-school experience for success. You can find part 1–3 at the links here, here, and here. This particular article will focus on the issues with modern educational systems and information, and their impacts on your ability to learn at a high level, as well as how knowledge management systems like Obsidian can help solve those problems Problems with Education Teachers are us

This article is the third of four articles in regard to how to set up your new debate season and back-to-school experience for success. You can find part 1 at the link here and part 2 at the link here. Look at our website tomorrow to read our last article in this series. This article is generally Gmail-specific, but generally speaking, all these tips ought to be equally useful for other email accounts and/or email managers such as Outlook or Apple Mail. If you are not using

This article is the second of four articles in regard to how to set up your new debate season and back-to-school experience for success. You can find part 1 at the link here. Look at our website tomorrow to read our next article in this series. These tips are generally specific to Google Calendar, but generally speaking, all these tips ought to be equally useful for other calendar apps such as Apple Calendar or the in-built calendar in Outlook. If you are not using Google Ca

Within a few days is the start of the 2025-2026 debate season, beginning debates on the Sept-Oct plea bargaining topic. For those who participated in debate camps or competed in tournaments that somehow used the Sept-Oct topic before September, your debate season has already begun. Regardless, a new debate season means that starting anew is a necessity for folder setup and file organization, as new topics (hopefully) mean the creation of new files. For that purpose, I will be

Debate has excesses of academic vernacular and jargon, to the extent that justifies debaters’ in-round critique of competitive debate as an “ivory tower” given its immense isolation and disconnect from everyday speech and concepts. Becoming an effective debater, with a mastery of kritiks and progressive debate, necessitates a solid understanding of the contextual language used in the variety of different philosophies, debate positions, and academic disciplines that debate uti

“ On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me An overview of generic generics ” For any given topic there are...

“On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me An overview of core kritiks” As part of an ongoing series, Kankee Briefs is...

“On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me Ten advanced tech tips for debate” In the spirit of the holiday season, Kankee Briefs will release daily articles for the next twelve days as part of the “Twelve Days of CX-Mas.” Despite the series’ holiday themed title being seemingly oriented towards CX (Policy) debate, these guides are usable for all forms of debate (with a particular focus on LD). As a matter of technically, the “The Twelve Days of Christmas” are rel