On Jan 24, 4:40 pm, Duggy  wrote:
> What I don't understand is how you can have a "longest" mini-
> something.
>
> Especially a "miniseries" that goes for 5 years.  That, to me, doesn't
> sound mini.  It sounds like a series.
>
> It's one of those movement of usage things that keeps happening in
> language.
>
> Once upon a time you had "series" (TV/radio shows with stand alone
> episodes) and "serials" (ongoing stories).  At some point everything
> became a series.  (Except old Doctor Who which remained a "series of
> serials.")
>
> Then you had telemovies... then someone made multiple part
> telemovies.  These needed a name.  Well, not completely.  Maltin's
> Movie Guide include multi-part telemovies that were advertised as such
> but not multipart movies that used the special name "mini-series".
The name may have appeared first in comicbooks with the 70s "World of
Krypton" miniseries; I'm not sure.
> Because multipart telemovies are by definition serials somehow
> anything that a pre-planned ending must be a
"mini"-"series".
>
> Language is fun.
There may be a trans-Atlantic question here. In the US, a "serial"
connotes mandatory cliffhanger endings for every episode; in the UK,
"serial" has a history of being used for anything. Indeed, the
original "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" were conceived by Conan Doyle
as a new way to make a "serial", for which the reader wouldn't need to
have read the earlier installments. In the US, "serial" is an
impossible name for B5.
("Serial" in the US is also a technical term used by librarians to
mean "magazines and newspapers".)
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32