 The emphasis that informal logic and its historical precursors place on natural language argument is in keeping with the social and pedagogical goals that motivate their development. The latter are best served by an easily understood, broadly disseminated, understanding of the difference between strong and weak instances of real life argument. Formal methods (Venn diagrams, probability theory — see Zenker 2013, different kinds of formal logic, etc.) can at times support this goal, especially in analyses of particular kinds of argument, but the overriding aim is natural language discourse guided by the principles of successful reasoning. 