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Friday 10 June 2016

The Difference Between England, Great Britain, And The United Kingdom


It’s ridiculous that a lot of people don’t know the difference between England and Britain, however, many of you don’t even know the difference between Britain and the United Kingdom, and that this would be a good topic for a podcast even though people should already know. 

I first became aware of the confusion when I was using Stamps.com to mail out the Peeve Wars decks, it took me at least 20 minutes to figure out that if I wanted to mail something to England or Scotland, I needed to select Great Britain from the long list of countries. 


Even then, I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know until I saw a diagram posted on the @copyediting account on Twitter that shows the relationship between the British Isles, British Islands, the United Kingdom, Great Britain, England, and so on. 

Great Britain is made up of England, Scotland, and Wales. Add a fourth, Northern Ireland, and now you have the United Kingdom.

Add the Crown Dependencies and you have the British Islands, and add the whole island of Ireland and you have the British Isles.

On the image, you’ll see that Scotland is still part of the United Kingdom. Their recent vote for independence—to leave the United Kingdom—would have changed that, but the people voted to keep things as they are, so we don’t have to make new diagrams.

By Mignon Fogarty

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