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Frequently asked questions
A1: Reliable sources support the view that the United Kingdom is a single country. This view is shared with other major reputable encyclopedias. There has been a long-standing consensus to describe the UK in this way.
A2: See the article entitled " Terminology of the British Isles". Great Britain is the name of the largest island that the UK encompasses, and is not generally used in source material as the name of the country. Indeed, Britain 2001, the "official reference book" of the United Kingdom produced by the Office for National Statistics for "British diplomatic posts" says in its foreword:
This view is reiterated by the Prime Minister's Office, which states:
A report submitted to the United Nations Economic and Social Council by the Permanent Committe on Geographical Names and the Ordnance Survey states:
There has been a long-standing consensus not to include Great Britain in the lead as an interchangable name of the state.
A2b: Whether Britain should be listed as an alternative name in the lead has been discussed often, most extensively in August 2007 and April 2011; and whether the alternate name Britain should be qualified with "incorrect" in June 2006, with "informally" in September 2006, or with "mistakenly" in January 2011.
A3: This is one of the most common questions raised on this talk page, but consistently, consensus goes against taking that approach. No major reputable source describes the UK in this way. However the history of the formation of the United Kingdom, supported by source material, highlights that England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are "countries within a country". Please also refer to Q4.
A4: This is the most frequent question raised by visitors to this talk page, and the issue which generates the most debate. However, as a result of a lack of a formal British constitution, and owing to a convoluted history of the formation of the United Kingdom, a variety of terms exist which are used to refer to England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Reliable and official sources support use of the word "countries":
On Wikipedia, the term has broadly won preference amongst the editing community (note, however, that a country is not the same as a sovereign state). Also commonplace is the phrase "constituent country, or countries", when referring to the countries as elements of the UK. This phrase, however, is not an actual term; ie Scotland is not a 'constituent country' in itself, but is one of the constituent countries of the UK. The community endeavours to achieve an atmosphere of neutrality and (for the sake of stability) compromise on the various UK naming issues. See also Countries of the United Kingdom for more details about the terms that have been used to describe England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
A5: Widespread confusion surrounds the use of the word " nation". In standard British English, and in academic language, a nation is a social group of two or more people, and not a division of land. This is also the approach taken in the nation article, and across Wikipedia (for example, the English people and the Québécois are described as "nations", reflecting real world practice). The term Home Nations is generally used only in sporting contexts. It is not used in any major reputable sources outside of sport, and is not the approach taken by any other encyclopedia.
A6: This view is supported by some sources, but the current consensus amongst the editing community is aligned to a greater body of work which describes both Northern Ireland and Wales as countries. However, the terms are not all mutually exclusive: a country can also be a principality or a province, and these terms are mentioned throughout Wikipedia as alternative names in afternotes.
A7: Northern Ireland has not had its own unique, government sanctioned flag since its government was prorogued in 1972, and abolished in 1973 under the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973. During official events, the British government uses the Union Flag — the flag of the United Kingdom — and this is the only flag used by the government in Northern Ireland. The consensus is to reflect this in the article with a note.
A8: Again, Wikipedia editors often disagree on the acceptability and suitability of various terms and phrases. This term is not favoured by a number of Wikipedia editors, and is currently not used in the introduction both to simplify the status quo, and also to discourage edit warring. |
This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
United Kingdom was one of the Geography and places good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Do we really need to list England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland in the infobox? Most (if not all) other independent countries (sovereign states) don't seem to list their components in their infoboxes. GoodDay ( talk) 00:30, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
This infobox template is used to generate an infobox for the right-hand side of two specific types of article: on a country or territory, or on a geopolitical organisation.It then gives the syntax, separately, for Infobox Country and Infobox Geopolitical organisation. The "Membership" parameter, not surprisingly, is only given for the geopolitical organisation. It is omitted from Infobox country. As one would expect, the EU infobox begins
Infobox geopolitical organisation. That's why it's there. The "Membership" parameter has been wrongly inserted in the Infobox country in this article. DeCausa ( talk) 20:54, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
We have a whole subsection in the Politics section on a dozen and a half peripheral (mostly) island territories that are not part of the UK. The level of coverage in this article (4 paragraphs and a very large and intrusive map - by far the largest map in the article) is a mystery. Their total population (BOTs and CDs combined) is only c. half a million and, in any case, we have full coverage in Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories. It's out of scope of this article and, for such a minor part of British governance, has far too much detail for WP:BALASP and WP:SUMMARYSTYLE. In fact, it gives the impression of some sort of residual 1970s-style post-imperial angst.
I suggest deleting the Dependencies section and replacing it with this additional 5th paragraph in the beginning of the Politics section:
Although not part of the United Kingdom, the three Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man and 14 British Overseas Territories across the globe are subject to the sovereignty of the British Crown. The Crown exercises its responsibilities in relation to the Crown Dependencies through the British government's Home Office and for the British Overseas Territories through the Foreign Office. [1]
References
Any support for this? DeCausa ( talk) 21:34, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Under the transport sub-section of the economy section, the sentence about the Elizabeth line:
"It was Europe's largest construction project at the time and will bring in an estimated £42 billion to the UK economy."
should have a wording change as the predicted income is speculative. I suggest changing to:
"It was Europe's largest construction project at the time and is estimated to bring in £42 billion to the UK economy." Wind Orange ( talk) 02:38, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
Does the current structure make sense? I'd imagine if you're not British (or even if you are) you'd be left quite confused by it. We have Scot/NI/Welsh local govt. covered in both sections. In terms of hierarchy it goes from top (UK) level in the previous section to lowest level (local govt) then middle (devolved) level but that "middle" level only tells you about 3 countries. You have to guess what the situation in England is.
It seems to me more logical for there to be an Admin divisions section which (1) starts off with the historical paragraph as now albeit expanded to say that the UK pre-1998 was highly centralized. (2) Then talk about how Devolution developed in general terms. (3) then have sections on each of the 4 countries (with heading for each) which covers not only the devolved institutions but also local government. In the England section it would explicitly cover how the UK institutions effectively continue to cover England - with something about the West Lothian question issues. I was going to go ahead and WP:BEBOLD but I know that some might have issue with not having a specific section on Devolution. I'll press on unless there are objections. DeCausa ( talk) 21:15, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Wikipedia constantly lies and is full of chronic misinformation. Out of respect for all those that you, Wikipedia, have been disrespecting world wide, I request you delete all pages with statements about the English language being American, and International English being the English language. English is from England. Not America. English is not International English, it is English! Call the American language what it is. American. Never call the UK a country! The UK is four different countries united! Stop being one of the most disrespectful, lying website's in the internet, full of chronic misinformation.
I am tired of correcting your pages and having my words replaced with lies! Name7528798543 ( talk) 09:12, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
In the phrase: "Other major cities include Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Glasgow and Leicester." I would definitely include Manchester. You may argue whether Manchester or Birmingham should be regarded the UK's second city, but for example: Manchester Airport is the busiest UK airport outside London 89.242.197.200 ( talk) 17:21, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
"The Bank of England is the UK's central bank and is responsible for issuing notes and coins in the pound sterling." BoE are responsible for issuing notes, The Royal Mint is responsible for issuing coins. 92.237.50.201 ( talk) 21:07, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Please update the percentages in the infobox relating to the population's racial composition according to the latest census data as seen in the infobox for Demographics of the United Kingdom.
According to the 2021 British Census, (now that Scotland has finally released its racial data), the racial composition of the U.K.'s population is as follows.
Star VV Cephei A ( talk) 22:18, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
United Kingdom article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38Auto-archiving period: 60 days |
Frequently asked questions
A1: Reliable sources support the view that the United Kingdom is a single country. This view is shared with other major reputable encyclopedias. There has been a long-standing consensus to describe the UK in this way.
A2: See the article entitled " Terminology of the British Isles". Great Britain is the name of the largest island that the UK encompasses, and is not generally used in source material as the name of the country. Indeed, Britain 2001, the "official reference book" of the United Kingdom produced by the Office for National Statistics for "British diplomatic posts" says in its foreword:
This view is reiterated by the Prime Minister's Office, which states:
A report submitted to the United Nations Economic and Social Council by the Permanent Committe on Geographical Names and the Ordnance Survey states:
There has been a long-standing consensus not to include Great Britain in the lead as an interchangable name of the state.
A2b: Whether Britain should be listed as an alternative name in the lead has been discussed often, most extensively in August 2007 and April 2011; and whether the alternate name Britain should be qualified with "incorrect" in June 2006, with "informally" in September 2006, or with "mistakenly" in January 2011.
A3: This is one of the most common questions raised on this talk page, but consistently, consensus goes against taking that approach. No major reputable source describes the UK in this way. However the history of the formation of the United Kingdom, supported by source material, highlights that England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are "countries within a country". Please also refer to Q4.
A4: This is the most frequent question raised by visitors to this talk page, and the issue which generates the most debate. However, as a result of a lack of a formal British constitution, and owing to a convoluted history of the formation of the United Kingdom, a variety of terms exist which are used to refer to England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Reliable and official sources support use of the word "countries":
On Wikipedia, the term has broadly won preference amongst the editing community (note, however, that a country is not the same as a sovereign state). Also commonplace is the phrase "constituent country, or countries", when referring to the countries as elements of the UK. This phrase, however, is not an actual term; ie Scotland is not a 'constituent country' in itself, but is one of the constituent countries of the UK. The community endeavours to achieve an atmosphere of neutrality and (for the sake of stability) compromise on the various UK naming issues. See also Countries of the United Kingdom for more details about the terms that have been used to describe England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
A5: Widespread confusion surrounds the use of the word " nation". In standard British English, and in academic language, a nation is a social group of two or more people, and not a division of land. This is also the approach taken in the nation article, and across Wikipedia (for example, the English people and the Québécois are described as "nations", reflecting real world practice). The term Home Nations is generally used only in sporting contexts. It is not used in any major reputable sources outside of sport, and is not the approach taken by any other encyclopedia.
A6: This view is supported by some sources, but the current consensus amongst the editing community is aligned to a greater body of work which describes both Northern Ireland and Wales as countries. However, the terms are not all mutually exclusive: a country can also be a principality or a province, and these terms are mentioned throughout Wikipedia as alternative names in afternotes.
A7: Northern Ireland has not had its own unique, government sanctioned flag since its government was prorogued in 1972, and abolished in 1973 under the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973. During official events, the British government uses the Union Flag — the flag of the United Kingdom — and this is the only flag used by the government in Northern Ireland. The consensus is to reflect this in the article with a note.
A8: Again, Wikipedia editors often disagree on the acceptability and suitability of various terms and phrases. This term is not favoured by a number of Wikipedia editors, and is currently not used in the introduction both to simplify the status quo, and also to discourage edit warring. |
This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
United Kingdom was one of the Geography and places good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article has been
mentioned by a media organization:
|
Other talk page banners | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
This page has archives. |
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Do we really need to list England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland in the infobox? Most (if not all) other independent countries (sovereign states) don't seem to list their components in their infoboxes. GoodDay ( talk) 00:30, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
This infobox template is used to generate an infobox for the right-hand side of two specific types of article: on a country or territory, or on a geopolitical organisation.It then gives the syntax, separately, for Infobox Country and Infobox Geopolitical organisation. The "Membership" parameter, not surprisingly, is only given for the geopolitical organisation. It is omitted from Infobox country. As one would expect, the EU infobox begins
Infobox geopolitical organisation. That's why it's there. The "Membership" parameter has been wrongly inserted in the Infobox country in this article. DeCausa ( talk) 20:54, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
We have a whole subsection in the Politics section on a dozen and a half peripheral (mostly) island territories that are not part of the UK. The level of coverage in this article (4 paragraphs and a very large and intrusive map - by far the largest map in the article) is a mystery. Their total population (BOTs and CDs combined) is only c. half a million and, in any case, we have full coverage in Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories. It's out of scope of this article and, for such a minor part of British governance, has far too much detail for WP:BALASP and WP:SUMMARYSTYLE. In fact, it gives the impression of some sort of residual 1970s-style post-imperial angst.
I suggest deleting the Dependencies section and replacing it with this additional 5th paragraph in the beginning of the Politics section:
Although not part of the United Kingdom, the three Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man and 14 British Overseas Territories across the globe are subject to the sovereignty of the British Crown. The Crown exercises its responsibilities in relation to the Crown Dependencies through the British government's Home Office and for the British Overseas Territories through the Foreign Office. [1]
References
Any support for this? DeCausa ( talk) 21:34, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Under the transport sub-section of the economy section, the sentence about the Elizabeth line:
"It was Europe's largest construction project at the time and will bring in an estimated £42 billion to the UK economy."
should have a wording change as the predicted income is speculative. I suggest changing to:
"It was Europe's largest construction project at the time and is estimated to bring in £42 billion to the UK economy." Wind Orange ( talk) 02:38, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
Does the current structure make sense? I'd imagine if you're not British (or even if you are) you'd be left quite confused by it. We have Scot/NI/Welsh local govt. covered in both sections. In terms of hierarchy it goes from top (UK) level in the previous section to lowest level (local govt) then middle (devolved) level but that "middle" level only tells you about 3 countries. You have to guess what the situation in England is.
It seems to me more logical for there to be an Admin divisions section which (1) starts off with the historical paragraph as now albeit expanded to say that the UK pre-1998 was highly centralized. (2) Then talk about how Devolution developed in general terms. (3) then have sections on each of the 4 countries (with heading for each) which covers not only the devolved institutions but also local government. In the England section it would explicitly cover how the UK institutions effectively continue to cover England - with something about the West Lothian question issues. I was going to go ahead and WP:BEBOLD but I know that some might have issue with not having a specific section on Devolution. I'll press on unless there are objections. DeCausa ( talk) 21:15, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Wikipedia constantly lies and is full of chronic misinformation. Out of respect for all those that you, Wikipedia, have been disrespecting world wide, I request you delete all pages with statements about the English language being American, and International English being the English language. English is from England. Not America. English is not International English, it is English! Call the American language what it is. American. Never call the UK a country! The UK is four different countries united! Stop being one of the most disrespectful, lying website's in the internet, full of chronic misinformation.
I am tired of correcting your pages and having my words replaced with lies! Name7528798543 ( talk) 09:12, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
In the phrase: "Other major cities include Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Glasgow and Leicester." I would definitely include Manchester. You may argue whether Manchester or Birmingham should be regarded the UK's second city, but for example: Manchester Airport is the busiest UK airport outside London 89.242.197.200 ( talk) 17:21, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
"The Bank of England is the UK's central bank and is responsible for issuing notes and coins in the pound sterling." BoE are responsible for issuing notes, The Royal Mint is responsible for issuing coins. 92.237.50.201 ( talk) 21:07, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Please update the percentages in the infobox relating to the population's racial composition according to the latest census data as seen in the infobox for Demographics of the United Kingdom.
According to the 2021 British Census, (now that Scotland has finally released its racial data), the racial composition of the U.K.'s population is as follows.
Star VV Cephei A ( talk) 22:18, 23 May 2024 (UTC)