Half-swording is the practice of gripping the blade half-way down in order to deliver a more accurate and powerful thrusting attack or to use the sword as a club, as seen below:
Given the prominence of plate armor in Westerosi warfare (46 results for plate armor across ASOIAF), I would expect half-swording techniques would develop in order to deal with opponents in full plate.
Incidentally, GRRM, if you wanted a better way to depict the Bronn/Vardis Egan fight, you should have gone with half-swording rather than the old canard about the weight of plate armor…
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