Abstract This work advocates for an alternative to the principle of charity when teaching critical thinking or informal logic. It provides a brief reconstruction of the principle in the context of argumentation before moving to demonstrate some of the shortcomings associated with different approaches to it in the literature. It argues for placing emphasis not on charity but on the interpretative competence that underlies charity. Doing so avoids the difficulties associated with the principle as such while still fostering the conditions for exploring the kinds of advanced interpretations the pursuit of charity typically yields.