Editors Thank you for the quick replies My original thoughts were that it s painfully obvious to any reader that the UK is a country and that this does not need pointing out an equivalent example The United States is a country consisting of fifty states and a federal district can be reduced without loss of clarity to The United States consists of fifty states and a federal district But very well I can see that it s been decided to emphasize the UK s status as a country Fair enough GoodDay Jamesinderbyshire You re both very right of course but I think there s a chance we could preserve these subtle complexities AND use clear language at the same time Perhaps there is a synonym for country that we can use that would eliminate this awkward wording altogether I noticed that the Four countries of the United Kingdom article uses the term sovereign state Would the following work It is a sovereign state consisting of four countries England Northern Ireland Scotland and Wales Alarics I realize the issue has been discussed before but I feel that the issue has often been tackled from a political perspective with pro devolution independence editors wanting to de emphasize UK s status as a unitary state and with nationalists wanting to do the opposite I am a Canadian reader without a lot of knowledge about UK politics or how the country operates I am approaching this issue purely from a writing editing perspective I am simply trying to make this article as clear and concise as possible without losing all the subtle complexities and compromises that various editors have negotiated into the article I m certainly not trying to set any new conventions and I certainly don t want to set off any edit wars 129 173 98 127