This paper studies the nonblocking check used in supervisory control of discrete event systems and its limitations. Different examples with different liveness requirements are discussed. It is shown that the standard nonblocking check can be used to specify most requirements of interest, but that it lacks expressive power in a few cases. A generalised nonblocking check is proposed to overcome the weakness, and its relationship to standard nonblocking is explored. Results suggest that generalised nonblocking, while having the same useful properties with respect to synthesis and compositional verification, can provide for more concise problem representations in some cases.