The changes to Speech Rules for 2025 have been approached with three major goals in mind:
Simplification
Transparency
Clarification

Simplification:
For the past several years, the Speech Guide has contained General Rules, Timekeeping Rules, Category Rules, Event-Specific Rules, and Script-Submission and Script-Use Rules. The 2025 Speech Rules will only contain rules for each specific event. (i.e., All rules for Apologetics will only be in “Apologetics Rules.”) Timekeeping guidelines, script-submission guidelines, tournament protocols, and other helpful information and examples will still be found in the Speech Guidelines, but will not be considered rules which could receive a penalty.

Transparency:
The 2025 Speech Rules will include a Penalty Appendix which explains the type of penalties that can be applied to certain rule violations and examples of each.

Clarification:
Most of the changes to the Speech Rules for 2025 come from separating rules that can receive a penalty from tournament protocols and guidelines. Other changes come from rewording rules for the sake of clarity. Any significant rule changes are noted in this document.