On Thu, 2003-05-01 at 06:10, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Jason Williams wrote:
Why is it so? Why is the principle that American and British English have equal status abandoned here? Why is the ugly "movie" explicitly preferred over the perfectly good "film"?
That "movie" is ugly is a pretty ad hoc aesthetic judgment, don't you think?
At any rate, perhaps there was a discussion somewhere about this?
Should be somewhere in the mailing list archives. Basically, there were many variants in use:
Bla bla (movie) Bla bla (1967 movie) Bla bla (film) Bla bla (1967 film) Bla bla (motion picture) Bla bla (Soderbergh film) Bla bla (Soderbergh movie) Bla bla (2002 Soderbergh movie) and whatnot.
"Bla bla (movie)" seemed to have the largest 'installed base', as it were, so when it was decided to establish some consistency, "(movie)" won out over the equally-simple but thus far less used (though more aesthetic, at least for us film folks) "(film)".
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)