Noun

(uncountable) The state or quality of being strict.

:Discipline calls for a certain strictness .

{{quote-Fanny Hill, part=3 , I lost all restraint, and yielding to the force of the emotion, gave down, as mere woman, those effusions of pleasure, which, in the strictness of still faithful love, I could have wished to have held up.}}

(countable) The result or product of being strict.

Noun

The state or quality of being serious.

*, chapter=16

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=“[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness . But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”}}

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=18 citation , passage=‘Then the father has a great fight with his terrible conscience,’ said Munday with granite seriousness . ‘Should he make a row with the police […]? Or should he say nothing about it and condone brutality for fear of appearing in the newspapers?}}

* July 18 2012 , Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Rises [http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-dark-knight-rises-review-batman,82624/]

Though Bane’s sing-song voice gives his pronouncements a funny lilt, he doesn’t have any of the Joker’s deranged wit, and Nolan isn’t interested in undercutting his seriousness for the sake of a breezier entertainment.