Flow; legal pads or loose paper?

[USC MissingLink]

Although not as steeped in theory as other discussions taking place here, I'm wondering what the consensus is for your flowing preferences.

I've always flowed on standard sized legal pads. When I did policy, I turned the legal-pads landscape, but in parli, since there were fewer speeches I used them portrait style. For me personally, I liked this set-up because of the way it kept my arguments organized by attaching them to a binding. I always knew exactly where any particular argument was (page 1, page 2 etc.).

Recently, purely because of the fact that I've run out of legal pads, I have flowed on white paper (portrait again). I know that this was the preferred flowing aparatous of my old partner Maselli and Danny & Brandon from NAU (who often loaned John paper when he ran out). The advantage I've found with this style is that it allows a more fluid organization of the argumentation of the round. It's easier to re-arrange your arguents into a more suitable order for any given speech. I, however, found that it was often hard to find arguments to put their responses. This was especially true in debates that were lacking in clear organization.

Is this something that anyone is coached in? Any preferences? Thoughts?

jEd

[tutakai]

Actually, this HAS come up in my coaching this year. I tell my debaters to use what they are comfortable with. Personally, I changed back and forth several times, but usually used the legal pad/portrait approach.

I think, however, that for experienced debaters multiple pages tends to work somewhat better. For novice debaters, single page minimizes the chance that they will "lose track" of an argument (either physically or mentally).

[Western Amy]

Loose legal sized paper, portrait style. Usually two sheets, one for on and one for off. postits are a great way to use notes for your partner and voters, i find. more later.

Amy

[NonEcdicus]

My paper issue is that the "no published material in the debating chambers" rule technically prohibits the reuse of paper that is clean as a whistle on one side and has a random page from a draft of some class assignment completely irrelevant to anything in the debate on the other.

That one's high on my list of possible future Bylaw Amendment proposals. :)

-Brian

[pattybar]

There were a couple of debaters I ran into last year or the year before whose habbit it was to flow on the back of tournament handouts...

I thought this was a little tacky, especially when it was at Creighton and I realized that the little punk was flowing on the backs of copies I'd probably ran and that Creighton team funds have paid for... I'm all about recycling, but when we were making many more copies than needed, just so debaters could flow on the back of them... it seemed a bit silly to me.

I brought up the printed materials concept to that debater, which was how I saw that they were flowing on the back of the new judge handout I'd run off earlier in the week....

Patty

[DreinCali]

unlined legal pads portrait style, or loose white computer paper stolen from a campus lab. the lines constrain me!! :)

for months owen was flowing on the back of these team flyers we had extras of. they were yellow and said "looking for a good fight? ucla debate. mischief. mayhem. timers." they were kind of conspicuous, but then, so was his wardrobe half the time.

[pattybar]

Andrea,

We may steal your recruitment flyer idea... "mischief, mayhem, timers" is great... no wonder Owen used them...

Patty

[truthisjust]

When I debated I typically used lined legal pads but as a coach and judge I have typically used loose leaf white papers (most of the time it is the back of the tourny rules etc.). I try to use 3 or 4 pieces depending on the types of arguments made. 1 for top of case stuff (criteria/t/values). 1 for the gov case. 1 for DAs. 1 for kritiks.

[Gavin499]

I personally prefer the legal pad in landscape format... I suppose I could flow portrait, but I find that landscape gives me more room to spread out, and I hate writing small :-) I use typically two (occasionally three) pads, one for on-case, one for off, and sometimes one for whatever needs more space... I tend to like the loose leaf papers for flowing when I'm judging, but as a debator, if I have an entire legal pad for on-case, it's unlikely I'll forget the whole pad... I've had instances where I'll flow a DA on a sheet of paper and forget it existed... which can become a problem... Just a personal preference though...

Gavin

[USC MissingLink]

On a side-but-related note, do people save the flows of others' cases? I've never saved an actual case, but I have writen down case-specific issues for further research when I get home or access to a computer...

jEd

[mdreher]

Ya'll will know when I'm in a round... big 18x12 sketch pads.

Why? I write too big... and the easier it is for me to *see* the arguments, the less likely it is for me to avoid missing them...

[DreinCali]

...may or may have not been correlated to the best new recruits we'd gotten in years. Probably..not. Anyway I cropped a picture of Ed Norton looking beat up on one side and Brad Pitt looking beat up and hot on the other, and put "Looking for a good fight?" between them...then under that, "UCLA Debate. Mischief. Mayhem. Timers. Tuesdays 5:30, blah blah blah..." If I was more tech-savvy I would have figured out how to change the bar of soap picture (easy to find) to say "Debate Club" or something.

I was going to do a "Rules of Debate Club" followup, but I got lazy and we didn't need it. Would still be fun though. (Rule 1: Please, please tell someone about the Debate Club! Someone with money!)

ok, enough being totally irrelevant.

and yes, I kept old flows sometimes. Sometimes in outrounds I would flow just the PMC to see how they set it up, or have a novice do it. We'd talk about it afterwards, and a very few times wrote the whole thing up. I believe we all had copies of NAU's asset forfeiture case and CSULB's Israel bad case, because we'd seen them run it multiple times. It was also just interesting to compare case construction.

Dre

[PancreasMatt]

I've found that loose sheets are alot better if you have the organization. Mainly, my problem is that every now and then i get real excited and loose the page i flowed T on under my desk. Not cool, but its better than missing stuff cause you have everything jammed onto one page. i think its alot better to go with the "one paper per Off-case" than the one page for all off case way, b/c you never know if someones going to 15 point you T violation or not.
matt c.

[BrendoFTC]

I like the xtended legal-length white pads for flow. I'd recomend them over loose for the same reason that PancreasMatt offers above, and namely because he can't find where he flowed T and steals my flow and I'mm all disorganized now. This is my plea: Partners of the world, respect the sharply dressed person sitting next to you and flow on attached sheets!

[WWUPhil]

come on

It isn't like we need more than one long sheet front and back... this saves paper and avoids the big bulky pad. Noone is saying enough to need more paper than that... then you don't lose anything. Many judges flow every arg and don't need more space than that. If you are putting each position on a different piece of paper, you are wishing.