Tag

A tag is the one- or two-sentence headline a debater speaks immediately before reading a piece of evidence (a "card") in policy, Lincoln-Douglas, public forum, or parliamentary-style debate. The tag tells the judge and opponents what argument the card is being deployed to prove, before the citation and the underlined text of the evidence are read aloud.

A typical card has three spoken components in order: the tag, the cite (author, qualifications, date, and source), and the text of the evidence itself. For example, a debater might say: "Sanctions collapse the Iranian economy" — that sentence is the tag — followed by an author and date, followed by the highlighted passage from the article.

Good tags share a few features:

• Claim-based, not topic-based. "Sanctions cause economic collapse" is a tag; "About sanctions" is not.
• Short — usually under 15 words, so flowing judges can write them down.
• Faithful to the card. Overclaiming (a tag that says more than the underlined text supports) is called power-tagging and is a common point of attack in cross-examination or rebuttal. Judges in many circuits will discount or strike evidence they find power-tagged.
• Warranted where possible, briefly indicating why the claim is true ("Sanctions collapse Iran's economy — oil revenue is 40% of GDP").

Tags are also the unit most often transcribed on a judge's flow (the running notes tracking arguments across speeches). Because rebuttal speakers reference earlier arguments by their tag language, a memorable, precise tag improves the chance an argument is extended cleanly through the round. In online evidence sets and team files, tags double as the searchable index: debaters cut cards and write tags so teammates can locate arguments quickly during prep or mid-round.