Montel introduced the concept of quasi-normal families $f:\varOmega\to\mathbb{C}$ in 1922: $\mathcal{F}$ is quasi-normal of order $N$ if every sequence $\{f_n\}$ from $\mathcal{F}$ has a subsequence which converges uniformly on compact subsets of $\varOmega\setminus Z^\dagger$, where $Z^\dagger\subset\varOmega$ contains at most $N\in\mathbb{N}$ elements. ($\mathcal{F}$ is of order $N:=\infty$ if every such exceptional set $Z^\dagger$ is finite.) The problem is that $Z^\dagger$ normally depends on the subsequence. So even if every sequence has a subsequence which converges to a given function $f$ in $\varOmega$ except at $N$ points, the sequence itself may not converge in any domain $D\subseteq\varOmega$.

In this paper we introduce the concept of general convergence. Indeed, $\{f_n\}$ above converges generally to $f$. We also introduce a related concept, restrained sequences, and study some of their properties. The definitions extend earlier concepts introduced for sequences of linear fractional transformations.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 20H10; 30B70; 30D45; 30F35; 58F08