He Didn’t Beg!

Perhaps the second-most common logical fallacy (after non sequitur) is “begging the question.” Well, maybe post hoc. Begging the question is when you use the thing you’re trying to prove as evidence for its truth. For example, someone asks whether you were speeding, and you reply, “Well, I didn’t get a ticket, did I?” Mostly people say “beg the question” because they heard the phrase in class when they weren’t paying attention, so that’s what they say when they mean “beg to ask a question.” They mean what the guy correctly says in the first panel:

When something stimulates you to ask a question, that’s okay; just don’t say you’re begging the question.

PS—a non sequitur is when two things happen together and you say that one thing is the cause of the other. And post hoc means “after this (therefore because of this.)” They are pretty similar.