by Mark Sheehan

Created on: March 03, 2009

Former US President Bill Clinton once commented that "(America) needs a debate that's not a screaming match". Whether or not President Clinton ranks amongst your favorites to hold that esteemed position, his words are nonetheless true: a debate can promote progress, but a screaming match can promote little other than insults and anger.

One of the hardest things to do is to convince people that you are right, especially when their own point of view differs from yours. Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule that guarantees that anyone will agree with you, but there are some things that can help them to edge towards your end of the table, so the speak.

There is always a temptation to approach a debate as a clinical piece filled with facts, numbers, references and opinion, but it is equally important to entertain. Entertaining does not mean belittling your argument; you don't have to cheapen it with smart remarks or detract from the issue at hand. It really is just about approaching from an unusual perspective.

There are several effective ways of doing this: using an anecdote; using an unusual fact; or addressing a loosely related question.

An anecdote can be the most effective of the three mentioned as it can bring the reader into the writer's world and include him in one of the author's own experiences. After all, people generally are more interested in the lives of others than in statistics. So, a debate on whether the beach is a better weekend destination than the forest can begin with reference to your own vacation, sunburned and sand-covered as a kid with your family, thereby making your argument engaging (perhaps even humorous) from the off.

An unusual fact can tweak the interest of the more factually-minded readers. For instance, a debate on cinema food and its nutrition can perhaps begin with the intriguing fact that in Colombia cinema goers munch on roasted ants. Or perhaps a debate on climate change can also refer to unusual weather events in recent decades or centuries: such as the fact that in 1894 in Bath, England the sky rained jellyfish.

A loosely related question (or perhaps fact or issue) can lead the reader from a seemingly obscure starting-point into the debate seamlessly, and offer a rounder approach to the core subject. I myself have used this tactic on occasion, once beginning a debate on whether Franco should be written out of Spanish history by questioning what the phrase "to forgive and forget" was actually worth. The two seem unrelated,

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