> Grain is now, and I hope always will be, a very precise term > when used to describe media characteristics. It is not "loosely > used in a variety of media." It is film specific. Except, > apparently, when academics get their hands on the language. This is simply not true. Granularity, once again, is widely used in a variety of fields. In programming, granularity refers to a program which has been carefully designed with a number of roughly equally sized modules and subroutines. Robert Carr, designer of Framework and the new Go interface, spoke of granularity as an important design goal in "great" (there's that word again!) software. There are other interesting etymological connections. A grain was probably the first ancient measure, both of weight and value. It is possible the Eqyptian system of weights and measures was based on a "grain" value which permeated their economic and scientific systems. In this context, "grain" indicates the finest degree of practical measurement. Returning to the question of grain in the media, we say that a broadcast or film has "grain" when the information displayed is of less resolution than the capabilities of the broadcast medium. The "grains" have become visible.