sentimental appeals
uses emotion to distract from the facts: "The deaths of so many poor dogs from lawnmower accidents have shown that mowing your lawn is bad.
red herring
use misleading or unrelated evidence to support a conclusion: "That curling iron is a waste of money because it has no logo on it.
scare tactics
try to frighten people into agreeing with the arguer by threatening them or predicting unrealistically dire consequences: "If you vote for the healthcare bill, your grandma will die!
bandwagon appeals
encourages an audience to agree with the writer because everyone else is doing so: "Kate Hudson got a **** job, that means we should too.
slippery slope
suggest that one thing will lead to another, oftentimes with disastrous results: "If you buy that purse, then you'll go broke, then you'll be homeless!
either/or choices
reduces complicated issues to only two possible courses of action: "You can take the money or you can die in poverty.
false need
create an unneccessary desire for things: "You need to have cuter shoes or people won't think you're popular.
false authority
asks audiences to agree with the assertion of a writer based simply on his or her character or the authority of another person/institution who may not be fully qualified: "My math teacher told us the world is flat, so it must be true.
using authority instead of evidence
offering personal authority as proof: "Trust me, I know her and she wouln't do that.
guilt by association
calls someone's character into question by examining the character of that person's associates: "Jenny's boyfriend Sam crashed his car, therefore Jenny is a bad driver.
dogmatism
shuts down discussion by asserting that the writer's beliefs are the only acceptable ones: "I think he's wrong, and that's that.
moral equivalence
compares minor problems with much more serious crimes (or vice versa): "Our new president is like Hitler.
ad hominem
attack a person's character rather than that person's reasoning: "Why should we trust him when he cheated on his wife?
strawperson
set up and often dismantle easily refutable arguments in order to misrepresent an opponents in order to defeat him or her
argument from doubtful or unidentified authority
passing on of information: "My cousin's sister's friend said that Julie was sleeping in class.
hasty generalization
draws conclusions from scanty evidence: "I wouldn't shop there-- the only time I went in the store, it was a mess.
post hoc
confusing chronology with causation: B can come after A without being caused by it: "Faith opened the door, and then I fainted-- surely not a coincidence.
non sequitur
does not logically related to what comes before it: "I've lived in this town for years so of course I oppose new houses!
equivocation
half true but obscures a part of entire truth: "I'm going to the library (not saying that you're going to a party too
begging the question
a writer restates his/her claim in a different way, such an argument is circular: "So, when you say that he's lying, are you saying that he isn't telling the truth?
faulty analogy
inaccurate, inappropriate, or misleading comparison b/w two things: "Letting ex-cons live within feet of our children is like telling them that it's okay to commit that crime.
stacked evidence
represents only one side of the issue and distorts: "Hamsters are better than gerbils because they are smaller, fuzzier, and can run around in a plastic ball.
oversimplification
supplying neat and easy explanations for large and complicated phenomena: "All these teenage kids that get in trouble with the law- why, they ought to ship 'em over to China. That would straighten 'em out.
deductive reasoning
conclusion validly follows from the premises (you have pieces of evidence that you make a conclusion about)
inductive reasoning
attempts to predict or suggest based on inferences, but this type is not always true