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