Ethics behind cutting evidence

I think this issue might go under the theory section as I am more interested in how one would justify the practice than how we should change the norm across the circuit. Anyway, I am wondering why the common practice of bolding and underlining/minimizing large portions of the text of cards is ethical. Honestly, I couldn't imagine turning in a paper in english class with 5-15 sets of ellipses within a single quotation. However, people read each other's cards during/after rounds and I have never seen anyone make a big deal out of how cards are cut unless something ridiculous has been removed. Should we really be changing the meaning of the evidence that much?

You shouldn't put ellipses, but you can make the words smaller. At a glance, you can just say the argument in the card wasn't made for a debate round, so some of the surrounding content would just confuse people and wouldn't be helpful. Moreover, they can read the card during the round; it's their fault they didn't ask. Ellipses bad is a pretty easy position if they don't have the full text with them because it kills predictability, skews research burdens, etc.

JohnnyFontane wrote:I think this issue might go under the theory section as I am more interested in how one would justify the practice than how we should change the norm across the circuit. Anyway, I am wondering why the common practice of bolding and underlining/minimizing large portions of the text of cards is ethical. Honestly, I couldn't imagine turning in a paper in english class with 5-15 sets of ellipses within a single quotation. However, people read each other's cards during/after rounds and I have never seen anyone make a big deal out of how cards are cut unless something ridiculous has been removed. Should we really be changing the meaning of the evidence that much?

The idea is you're not changing the meaning, but rather, reducing wordiness of a quotation. This type of thing is done in newspapers/other forums constrained by a word/time limit. You wouldn't honestly want to quote the entire section of an article/book that you have in the card.