logline
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English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
First attested in 1613 as logge-line. A compound of log + line.
(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “What is the origin of the 'authorship' sense?”)
Pronunciation[edit]
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈlɒɡ.laɪn/
Noun[edit]
logline (plural loglines)
- (authorship) A very short summary of a script or screenplay.
- Coordinate term: elevator pitch
- 2013, Xander Bennett, Screenwriting Tips, You Hack, page 16:
- Screenwriting Tip #12: If you don't know your own logline, you probably don't know what your script is about. Some writers will tell you they don't have a logline. Their screenplay is “too complex” or “too character-driven,” […]
- 2013, Linda Venis, Cut to the Chase: Writing Feature Films with the Pros at UCLA Extension Writers' Program, Penguin, →ISBN:
- The first step in outlining is to make sure that your logline, that one-or-two- sentence summary of your movie you first created in chapter 2 (“Jump-starting the Screenplay”), is the best that it can be in capturing what your movie is about now.
- (nautical) The line fastened to the log, and marked for finding the speed of a vessel.
- 1613, Mark Ridley, A Short Treatise of Magneticall Bodies and Motions:
- Besides the ingenious Pilot knowing the elevation of the Pole in some places of his voyage that he hath passed, by keeping a true, not a dead reckoning of his course in pricking his Card aright, and observing the way with the logge-line, with other currants, will give a very artificiall conjecture of the elevation of the pole in that place where he is, though he sec neither Sunne nor Starres.
- 1627, John Smith, A sea grammar with the plaine exposition of Smiths Accidence for young sea-men, enlarged:
- Bring the ship to rights, that is, againe under saile as she was, some use a Log line, and a minute glasse to know what way shee makes, but that is so uncertaine, it is not worth the labour to trie it.
- 1659, John Collins, Navigation by the Mariners Plain Scale New Plain'd:
- The 120th part of that Mile is 41⅔ feet, and so much is the space betweene the Knots upon the Log-line: So many Knots as the ship runs in half a minute, so many Miles she sayleth in an hour; or so many Leagues, and so many Miles she runneth in a Watch or four hours, called A Watch, because one half of the Ships Company watcheth by turns, and changes every four hours.
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
short summary
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line fastened to the log
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