[rayiner]

> In fact, in public discourse often the opposite is true.

This isn't just true in public discourse by the way. It's true in proposal/grant writing, legal argumentation, or even just arguing with your parents. You should always lead with your strongest arguments, and think very carefully before including any weak ones. Humans are just bad at doing weighted analysis of persuasive arguments. Say you have an argument, with three points, with weights: 0.9, 0.05, and 0.05. Your opponent destroying your two weak arguments is going to convince the reader or decision maker far more than the 0.1 combined weight of the arguments.

[lcc_tn]

What you say resonates very much with my experiences too.

Do you happen to have book recommendations maybe that talk about this at a greater length?

[rayiner]

Argument and rhetoric is a whole field of study. Prof. David Zarefsky at Northwestern has a good set of lectures on the subject which are on Amazon. The outline is here: http://thefulldialectician.synthasite.com/resources/ZAREFSKY...

My exposure to the subject has been in the legal context. This is a popular textbook on legal argumentation: Gardner, Legal Argument: The Structure and Language of Effective Advocacy. Someone has an older edition for cheap on EBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/LEGAL-ARGUMENT-THE-STRUCTURE-AN-/310.... The text is quite general, not all that specific to the legal context.

[lcc_tn]

Thanks very much! I'll definitely look into these.