Coming soon

Welcome to the Club of debaters who are done with Word

Tagline is a free Chrome extension that brings the keys, headings and speech docs you know from Verbatim, the Word template most debaters use, into Google Docs. You can cut cards, build your speech and flow the round without opening Word, and it’s almost ready to install.

Try cutting a card on this pageWatch the film 2:46

The five things Tagline does most

Everything happens inside the Google Doc you’re already in

Each visual below plays on its own, and the numbered steps beside it light up as it reaches them. You can click a step to jump straight to it. The keys change to match your laptop, which you can switch in the try it section.

1 · Cutting cards

A card is a quote from your source with your claim written above it

In policy, Lincoln-Douglas and public forum debate, evidence is passed around as cards, which are passages copied from an article or book with a one-line claim on top and the source underneath. Cutting a card means formatting it so that you read only its most important words aloud, and Tagline gives each part of that job its own key.

  1. The tag is your claim in one line, in your own words, and F7 formats it as a Tag, the smallest of Verbatim’s headings.
  2. The cite says who wrote the evidence and when, so the other team can check it, and F8 puts it in the Cite style, which makes the author and year stand out.
  3. Underlining marks the words that carry the argument, so you select each stretch of them and press F9.
  4. Highlighting with F11 marks the words you’ll actually say out loud, which are usually fewer than the ones you underlined.
  5. Shrinking with Alt+F3 makes the rest of the text small, so the card keeps its full context for anyone who wants to read it but takes up far less room.

Each key makes one change, so undo takes it back. The formatting shows up 10–25 ms after the key press, which we measured in a real Google Doc on a MacBook.

2 · Building a speech

One key copies a card into your speech doc

Before you speak, you gather the cards you’ll read into one document, the speech doc, which you read from in the round and share with the other team. With Tagline you choose your speech doc once, and after that you can send cards to it from any file you have open.

  1. The Tagline bar at the top of your file shows which speech doc your cards will go to, which here is the 1AC for round 3.
  2. You put your cursor anywhere in a card and press `, the key to the left of 1.
  3. A copy of the card, formatting and all, lands in the speech doc under the heading that doc’s cursor is on, and never in the middle of a paragraph.
  4. The card stays exactly where it was in your backfile, the file of cards you’ve cut before, because sending never changes the original.

In the speech doc, you can also mark where you stopped reading and keep time with the timer on Alt+M.

3 · Giving the speech

Read mode shows only the words you’ll say

When it’s your turn to speak, the small shrunk text gets in the way, so Read mode shows only the headings, tags, cites and highlighted words, in large type. It changes only what your own screen shows, which means your partner and the judge still see the doc exactly as it is.

  1. This is the speech doc as it normally looks, with every card complete.
  2. You press Alt+R to turn read mode on, and the same keys turn it off again.
  3. What’s left is only what you’ll read aloud, in large type and in columns, with the word count and an estimated reading time at the top.

4 · Finding cards you’ve already cut

You can search every card in your backfiles from any doc

Over a season you collect dozens of files full of cards. The evidence library reads the Word files in a folder you choose and lets you search all of their cards from inside any Google Doc, which is the job Verbatim’s Virtual Tub does.

  1. You press Alt+L and type a few words, the way you’d describe the card to a teammate, and results appear while you type.
  2. The best matches come first, and because Tagline also searches related terms by fixed rules, without AI, “heg” finds cards that say hegemony or primacy.
  3. Each result shows the card’s tag and cite, the file and heading it’s filed under, and labels for whether it’s an affirmative or negative card and what kind of argument it is.
  4. Enter puts the whole card in at your cursor, formatted the way your settings say, and a single undo takes it back out.

Your library is stored on this computer and encrypted, and searching it doesn’t need an internet connection.

5 · During the round

You can take your flow right next to the doc

While the other team speaks, debaters write down every argument on a flow, a sheet with one column for each speech. Tagline’s flow is laid out like a paper flow and opens in Chrome’s side panel beside your doc when you press Ctrl+Shift+`.

  1. Each tab along the top is one sheet for one position, such as your case or an argument the other team brings against it.
  2. Each column is one speech in the order they happen, and layouts for policy, Lincoln-Douglas and public forum are built in.
  3. Answers sit in the same row as the argument they answer, and Enter adds another answer to it while Tab answers it in the next speech.
  4. The column for the speech happening now is marked, so you can always see where the round is.

Try it here

Cut a real card on this page

The card below is plain text, the way an article looks when you first paste it in. Follow the five steps with the keys for your laptop, or click the keys on screen, and it turns into a finished card just as it would in Google Docs.

Which laptop are you using?

Press the F-keys along the top row of your keyboard. On many laptops that row changes the volume or brightness first, so if F9 turns your volume down, hold Fn while you press it, or turn on Fn Lock (on many laptops that’s Fn+Esc). If F11 makes your browser full screen, press Alt+C to highlight instead.

  1. Make the claim a tag. Click anywhere in the first line and press F7.
  2. Mark the cite. Select the author and date, Doe 25, and press F8.
  3. Underline what you’ll read. Select words in the card and press F9.
  4. Highlight what you’ll say. Select some of those words and press F11.
  5. Shrink the rest. Press Alt+F3 to make the unread words small.

Tariffs raise prices, and the poorest households pay the most

Doe 25 (Jane Doe, an economist, in a sample card written for this page)

When a country puts a tariff on imported goods, the importer usually passes most of that cost on to the people who buy them. Because lower-income households spend a larger share of what they earn on goods, rather than on services or savings, the same tariff takes a bigger bite out of their budgets than it does out of the budgets of wealthier families, which means the burden of a tariff falls hardest on the households least able to carry it.

Start with step 1: click in the first line of the card and press F7.

These are the same keys Tagline uses in Google Docs, and you can change any of them in its settings.

And the rest of the first release

Tagline also handles the parts around the round

Cards from any web page or PDF

Select text on a news site, in a journal or in a PDF and press Alt+Shift+Y. Your doc comes to the front with the cite already written from the page, so you only check it and add the card.

Sharing your speech with the round

Tagline can upload your speech doc, or a clean send doc made from it, to a SpeechDrop or Tabroom share room, and post the cites you read to openCaselist. It can’t reach any of these sites until you allow each one in Settings.

Flowing with your partner

In Public Forum, one partner starts a live flow from the Round menu and the other joins with its code, and each of you sees the other’s lines within a few seconds.

Bringing your Verbatim setup

Choose your Verbatim template or settings file, and Tagline lists every change it would make before it uses any of them. F1 lists every action and searches as you type, even by Verbatim’s names for things.

Organizing a large file

The outline lists every Pocket, Hat, Block and Tag, Verbatim’s four heading levels, as a tree beside the doc, and you can drag cards and blocks into a new order. Save as Word file downloads any doc with Verbatim’s styles.

Keeping your work on your computer

Tagline runs entirely in your browser. It has no servers, no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no AI, so your documents never reach us. Something leaves your computer only when you send it yourself.

The film

Watch every feature in under three minutes

The film starts twelve minutes before a round with a file of uncut cards, and follows them from cutting to the speech. It has music, so you may want your sound on.

Write to us

Suggest a feature or ask us anything

Tagline is still being finished, so this is the best time to tell us what your team needs. You can suggest a feature, or ask about the release, installing it at school, privacy or anything else.

Describe what you’d use it for, so we can build it the right way.0 of 2,000 characters

We keep what you send for up to 12 months and use it only to answer you and to decide what to build. Only the people making Tagline can read it, it’s never shared or sold, and we don’t store your IP address.

Tagline will be free in the Chrome Web Store when it’s released

Everything on this page is part of the first release, for debaters, coaches and schools alike.