Types of Evidence
Numbers (for example, date and time, or any specific number or measurement: Length of a boat, number of witnesses, votes for a certain bill, score of a game, etc.)
Statistics. Although technically just one form of number evidence, statistics are special enough to count as their own separate type of evidence, especially because they are so valuable at making evidence
representative.
Names (for example, place names, names of individuals, organizations, movements, etc.)
Expert opinion (this refers to the use of someone else’s knowledge or opinion, not that of the author—when the author quotes or mentions a recognized expert in the field)
Specialized knowledge (the author’s own knowledge, not common knowledge, usually acquired through some sort of formal training)
Individual stories/examples, also known as
anecdotal evidence (When the term “anecdotal” evidence is used, it is generally a negative or critical term suggesting that the evidence is not representative. Individual stories or examples, however, are often useful evidence.)
Physical details (sense data)—things you can see, hear, touch, smell or taste
- Dialogue (Speech of other people reported directly, exactly as spoken, usually with quotation marks [“ ”] around it and set off in separate paragraphs, one for each speaker. Technically this is a subset of physical detail, because it is something you can hear, but direct reporting of what people have said is important enough to be considered a separate category.)
Documentary evidence (evidence
from documents). This includes all of the following, among many others:
- Letters
- Diaries
- Unpublished writings (early drafts of works published later; juvenile works by famous authors, etc.)
- Laws
- Administrative policies, like the Washington Administrative Code
- Court decisions
- Speeches, interviews, and other statements by relevant people