You know how some people, when describing a movie, sometimes call it a show? I once had a friend in college from North Dakota who used to say things like this all the time. “Oh! Princess Bride! I love that show!”

And the skin on the back of my neck would just crawl. It’s a movie, it’s a film. It’s not a show. They show shows on the TV. You could call a play or a live musical production a show. But a full-length feature you watch in a theater or on a disc in your living room is not a show.

Apparently there are some people who get it wrong in the opposite direction.

The former mistake I could almost forgive. Calling a movie a “show” could almost be defended as a regionalism, no matter how much it makes my toes curl.

But calling two television shows on disc “movies” is just so inexplicable. Does transferring an entire season of hour-long medical TV shows to discs without commercials make it a movie?   Wouldn’t it be easier to type, “I season 6 of Grey’s on DVD, and Private Practice.” Everybody knows what you’re talking about.

I know you all think I’m being way too picky about the semantics with this one. But it’s about the principle.

It’s about using too many words.

It’s about saying what a thing actually is.

Most importantly, this is about keeping my skin from crawling. Come on, people. Movies. Shows. LOOK IT UP.