That is the norm in tennis and cricket, where challenges in the bank have been known to be used frivolously rather than wasted.
"Women in mini skirts and daisy dukes are the norm in society through the eyes of men, but a man wearing shorts shocks men".
Levels of customer service are still probably the worst of any European capital, but truly egregious rudeness and aggression are now the exception rather than the norm, as a whole generation of Muscovites who have travelled the world no longer find surly, Soviet-style service acceptable at home.
More recently, a report from the centre-right think tank Civitas also argued for rents to be held to inflation levels and indefinite tenancies to be offered as the norm.
"It has become a norm for this media to brand the defenders of the honour of Prophet Muhammad as terrorists," the Taliban statement complained.
The consultation paper also says that state surveillance of the internet must be the exception rather than the norm, and "must only take place where it is clearly justified for the protection of the public and in accordance with the fundamental principles of necessity and proportionality".
Backup colonies, insurance populations, or captive breeding troupes – whatever your preferred term – have increasingly become the norm in amphibian conservation.
Half a century on from a time when birth control was illegal and sex discrimination was the norm, many Americans might not have realized how far we've come.
Nowadays the average viewer has hundreds of channels to choose from … flat screen tellies are the norm … and you can access television through tablets, smartphones, consoles … basically any device that is connected to the internet.
This is one of those watershed moments when a human evil and injustice that is part of the norm suddenly becomes questioned and challenged".
It is also a matter of how we perceive the relationship between man and nature – whether we regard the natural world as the aesthetic norm, something pristine upon which humanity and our technological "advances" intrude.
