Su Shi is good at writing argumentative essays. His historical essays written in his early years have a strong habit of strategists, sometimes pretending to be amazing and unreasonable. For example, On Jia Yi accused Jia Yi of not knowing how to make friends with ministers in order to win the trust of the court, and On Fan Zeng suggested that Fan Zeng should be the righteous emperor who killed Xiang Yu. But there are also many original opinions, such as "On Hou", which advocates that the old man was a hermit in Qin Dynasty, and humiliation is to cultivate his perseverance; On Wang Ping criticizes Zhou Pingwang's blunder in avoiding bandits and moving the capital, which is novel, profound and enlightening. These historical theories are good at randomness, amazing in writing, showing a high degree of argumentation skills, and became the model essays for scholars at that time, so they spread widely.