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Argumentation is a key skill in most school subjects and academic disciplines, including science and mathematics. This study compares explicit argumentation in first-semester university textbooks in biology, chemistry and mathematics in order to increase the understanding of how similarities and differences between disciplines can contribute to, or disrupt, students’ transferrable argumentation skills. Results show that there is significantly more explicit argumentation in the mathematics textbook compared to the biology and chemistry textbooks, and signifycantly more explicit argumentation in the chemistry textbook compared to the biology textbook. Further, the biology textbook contains less argumentation marked by classical argumentative markers such as “since”and “because” and more marked with other, less clear, types of markers such as “which is why” and “when” compared to the other two textbooks. The mathematics textbook contains more complex (recursive) argumentation than the science books. Thereby, the subject-specific languages inthe disciplines have potential to offer students different examples of argumentation. The results will be discussed in relation to students’ development of scientific literacy.