Talk:Great Britain

Semi-protected edit request on 17 April 2023

60% smaller is a meaningless statement, it's either 60% of the size or 40% of the size. 78.146.141.153 (talk) 23:46, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

 Done - while '60% smaller' can only possibly mean 40% of the size, I have altered the wording for clarity. Tollens (talk) 01:38, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Since when does any country on the planet define itself in reference to the percentage it is bigger or smaller than another? That sentence comes across as a pointless willy measuring exercise at best. 109.78.145.59 (talk) 19:53, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

These aren't countries, they're islands. It's fairly common to compare sizes of geographical entities. WaggersTALK 10:24, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

What? I know they're islands - that's got nothing to do with anything. Seriously who goes around comparing the sizes of other "geographical entities" when talking a specific country. Fine - why not put in how big Great Britain is by comparison to Mongolia or Canada whilst at it

Absolutely daft 51.37.202.62 (talk) 17:25, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Seriously, what do you not understand about the first five words of the article: "Great Britain is an island..."; and the note at the top: "This article is about the island."? Bazza 7 (talk) 10:23, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Shouldnt be "40 percent" instead of "40 per cent" 2601:285:8000:1C8:2009:7344:160A:B17F (talk) 15:19, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

No, "per cent" is correct. Put it down to WP:ENGVAR if you like - "percent" might be ok too but there's no reason to change it. 50% means 50 items for every 100 items, "100" is simply changed to "cent" so it becomes "50 per cent"; it doesn't suddenly become a single word. WaggersTALK 10:28, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Is there a competition to shove the now archaic term Brytish isles into every single article in Wikipedia?

Wikipedia really needs to take a good look at the use of archaic geopolitical language being pushed by a small number of its editors 31.187.2.87 (talk) 11:16, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Archaic? Still in pretty common day-to-day use as far as I'm aware. What would you prefer? 'Bretonic Isles'? Breazecatch (talk) 22:24, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Proposal removal of "commonly shortened to Britain"

The bold claim that Great Britain is commonly shortened to Britain is unsubstantiated and seems to be opinion.

If we were to pick any random news article from English-language media in any country any time in recent history, "Britain" is invariably used as an alternative name for the country that is the United Kingdom, not for the subset of the UK that is Great Britain (regardless of whether offshore islands are included, and regardless of whether we are conceptualizing Great Britain as a geographic or political term).

I personally dislike the term "Britain", but that is of course irrelevant, and I can simultaneously dislike it while observing the reality of how it is used. I wonder how many of the people insisting on the notion that Great Britain is commonly shortened to Britain are doing so not on the objective merits of the case, but because they personally like the idea that when people say "Britain", they are referring not to the United Kingdom but to the oh-so-wonderful 'Great' Britain. Kennethmac2000 (talk) 13:16, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

• Support, it was added within the last year and has been disputed. I foolishly changed it to "commonly" because "often" is not really used in leads, but it is clearly not either and was reverted when trying to weaken the word. The term is usually used in political contexts where it is almost always referring to the UK as a whole, rarely seen in geographical contexts for the island as anything other than "Great Britain" aside public discourse. DankJae 21:01, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Explaining an edit

@Roxy the dog, I apologize for reinstating an edit without discussion—I didn't see that my edit was reverted, so the article came up again in my query results and I should have been more careful to see that I already was reverted. Here's an article from MLA that explains it better than I probably can: https://style.mla.org/comprise-compose/ PorcelainChicken (talk) 22:13, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I've asked you elsewhere to tell me what MLA is, and how it relates to wikipedia? - Walter Ego 22:15, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Here's a link to that discussion for any others seeing this: User_talk:PorcelainChicken#What is wrong with "comprise" ?.

My answer was "The Modern Language Association is a professional organization dedicated to language and literature, they publish style guides and are considered a reliable source academically, so I thought it was helpful to provide one of their articles for verification since you asked me to justify my edits."

Let me know where you would like to continue the discussion, my apologies for starting one here as well if that isn't appropriate, I just wanted to apologize here once I realized what happened in case others are also wondering about the edits. PorcelainChicken (talk) 22:25, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I see now that I had to go into my preferences to activate notification for reverts on web. Again, my apologies, my intention was not to start edit warring and I should have taken more care to look at the edit history. PorcelainChicken (talk) 22:29, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

"Großbritannien" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Großbritannien has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 September 13 § Großbritannien until a consensus is reached. A1Cafel (talk) 04:40, 13 September 2026 (UTC)