Talk:Continental United States

Question on "CONUS"; I've never heard of this acronym in my life. Is it specific to the telecommunications industry? --Brion 17:39 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

Yes, it is used in the telecomminications industry, where everything is an acronym. I do not know if it is used anywhere else b/c this is where I encountered it. --Michael 17:43 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

Actually, CONUS is frequently used in government discussions as well. I would have no qualms about using the term in discussions including defense/homeland security/foreign policy. It's probably prevalent in other sorts of circles as well, but I can't speak to that from personal experience.

Figures. :) Out of curiosity, how's it pronounced? "Cone-us" or "Con-you-ess" or what? --Brion

"Cone-us" --Michael 18:05 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

---

After doing a little Google research, i find:

• The relavent gist of the Alaska Omnibus Act (and i think of law since the Hawaii Omnibus Act as well) is that
  • for most legal purposes, continental United States means the states and the District of Columbia, but
  • at least for a while after Alaska statehood, it left Alaska out when used in IRS tax law, and
  • the term originated in Federal law before Alaska statehood, (contrary to our article)
• Administratively, Federal agencies including the military generally mean by it the contiguous (conterminous) US, i.e. 48 plus DC; AFAIK this sense is always meant when CONUS is used.
• Private bodies may be more inclined to include AK but omit HI, as the term logically suggests.

It also appears that "non-continental" is much less used than "continental United States". ("Outside continental United States" may be more used instead.) The contexts i found seemed to be mostly or all ones where it was not restricted to states, but included other US territories, notably PR and Guam.

IMO, contiguous is clear (and non-contiguous may be depending on context), but continental and non-continental introduce pointless confusion when used in articles. I would suggest that the few dozen articles linking to Continental United States would profit from being editted to replace them with Contiguous United States, which would link to Continental United States, and that Continental United States link back, but restrict itself almost exclusively to documenting the ambiguity of the term.

While i am calling Continental United States ambiguous, i don't think it should be a disamb page, bcz i think there is little need to link to it once we have a Contiguous United States article, and probably only Contiguous United States needs an outgoing link; the other two IMO need to be discussed only to document the ambiguity, and articles on the other two senses are unlikely to be useful.

--Jerzy 07:31, 2004 Feb 20 (UTC)

• In personal experience, I've heard "contiguous" used far more often than "continental" in everyday speech. Given that it also seems more logical, I am in favor of a name change.Funnyhat 19:02, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

---

I've moved this text out, as the act in question shows it is surely mistaken:

This rhetorical distinction originated in the Alaska Omnibus Act of 1959 in light of the state's admission into the Union and had to do with IRS legalities.

I'm not satisfied with my substitute, and the hints this deleted text gives may aid further research. --Jerzy(t) 06:05, 2004 Mar 3 (UTC)

North Pacific

I've restored the cap N in

North Pacific Ocean

even tho we lack an article for North Pacific Ocean.

After research, i find that:

• our map in Pacific Ocean has portions labelled "North Pacific Ocean" and "South Pacific Ocean";
• 90% of our articles containing the phrase "north pacific" capitalize both words;
• of the remaining 10%, none (i think, but certainly virtually none) use it to refer to the "North Pacific Ocean"; rather, they either
  • describe a limit on the range of a species, which is unlikely to fill the whole North Pacific Ocean, and might IMO be accurately described even it the range includes smaller portions of the South Pacific, or
  • refer to the northern half or third of the Pacific coast of something whose Pacific coast is probably entirely on the North Pacific, or entirely on the South Pacific;
• two gazetteers at hand, and my preferred hard-copy atlas's map of the Pacific, all omit both "North Pacific Ocean" and "South Pacific Ocean".

IMO,

• this evidence need not close the discussion, but
• it is unreasonable to go to the small N without first
  • challenging, on Talk:Pacific Ocean, the prevalent convention,
  • showing that the apparent consensus is not real, and
  • further discussion here should follow substantial discussion there.

--Jerzy(t) 07:29, 2004 Mar 9 (UTC)

Continental states vs Alaska and Hawaii

If the 48 continguous states are referred to as the continental US ... what are the other two states referred to as other than non-continental. It is a question on my granddaughters homework frankly. "These two states (Alaska and Hawaii) are in what part of the country?" Any suggestions? Smile

So what's wrong with "non-conterminous". Uhh, don't bother answering. [grin]

My objection to "non-continental" was intended to help tune up the article, and the young lady's needs may be different. If you search Google for non-continental, you will get some hits, so using it isn't just making up a word.

I think what makes "non-continental" distasteful to me is that "continental" is a compromise between accuracy and convenience, and talking about the states to which it doesn't apply should be seen as an opportunity to discard it, rather than trying to express the opposite of something so inherantly awkward. By analogy, as soon as i start to wonder whether i mean "state-boundary modification" or "state boundary-modification" (the hyphen being redundant and therefore incorrect in the 2nd), i try to remember to just say "modification of state boundary" or "boundary modification by a state", rather than potentially put the reader thru the same mental acrobatics.

If she doesn't like

Continental US

Other

Alaska

Hawaii

then how about

Continental US

Alaska

Hawaii

which captures the reality better than trying to force AK & HI into an artificial category?

Hope that's some kind of help; if not, Wikipedia:Reference Desk might engage more minds than this specialized corner of WP. [smile] --Jerzy(t) 17:03, 2004 Mar 10 (UTC)

The actual term used by the Government applied to anything not CONUS, for purposes of paying things such as per diem to Government and Military personnel, is OCONUS. It means Outside Contiguous United States. -J

The Alaska problem

I removed this text:

it unambiguously excludes the remaining two states: it is clear that neither Hawaii (an archipelago in the North Pacific Ocean), nor Alaska (being separated from the "lower 48" by Canada), is either contiguous or conterminous with any other U.S. state.

That would make sense if the title of this article were "contiguous US" or "conterminous US", but it's not, it's "continental US". So this text is irrelevant. Alaska is not in the "continental US" because of common usage, not because of logic.

Axlrosen 23:28, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Area?

What's the area? - Jerryseinfeld 21:23, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Refers to"

This article said the following:

The continental United States refers (except sometimes in U.S. federal law and regulations) to the

I changed it to this:

The continental United States refers (except sometimes in U.S. federal law and regulations) to the

The style manual at Wikipedia:Manual of Style, like many style manuals, says that when writing about a word or phrase rather than using the word to write about what it refers to, one should italicize it. See also use-mention distinction. But also, to say "The continental United States refers to..." with the word "the" OUTSIDE of the highlighted part is to imply that the word "the" is not part of the expression that "refers to" something, and that would mean that it's not the expression that refers to that thing, but rather it's the continental United States itself that refers to that thing. I becomes like all those articles that say "A dog refers to an animal that barks" instead of "A dog is an animal that barks". Michael Hardy 00:16, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

To add under "see also" section

I would like to add the following to the "see also" section.

*[[Kingdom of the Netherlands]]
*[[Mainland China]]
*[[Metropolitan France]] — Instantnood 20:51, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

So what? You'd like to. But unless you have a good reason to do so, it will be reverted. Gene Nygaard 22:18, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"More correctly"

The original text read:

The continental United States is also used, more correctly, to refer to those 48 states plus Alaska.

I think this could say "more logically" instead of "more correctly", but "more correctly" flies in the face of actual documented usage. But even as I've left it, this isn't a very useful comment, lacking any documentation of actual usage, since there is plenty of documentation for its usage as "the continguous states".

Unfortunately, without the aside, the text as I've left it doesn't make much sense. A more accurate resummary would be:

Some claim the continental United States should more logically refer to those 48 states plus Alaska.

Moreover, the original comment clearly doesn't make any sense in context, because the very next paragraph is a list of other ways of saying "the continental US" without being ambiguous--but the way it is phrased is "the continental US is also sometimes referred to as:"--and if "the continental US more correctly refers to 49 states", then how can that also be referred to as "the lower 48"?!?

I think the only reasonable thing to do here is to move the comment about its more logical meaning to the end of initial section, and to revise it to state that the term is ambiguous or even illogical. But does anyone actually use it to refer to 49 states? Or do they just note that logically that's what it should mean, so it's ambiguous? --63.204.132.73 18:52, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's used for 49 states often enough that companies sometimes advertise sale prices "in the continental United States except Alaska" (probably didn't have the qualifier at first, and somebody called them on it). Gene Nygaard 19:18, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that's evidence for anything other than the fact that some people complain that the term is illogical, though. I suspect nobody who thinks the phrase 'continental united states' should logically refer to 49 states ever uses it that way, since they know it would be in danger of being misinterpreted. Ok, however, on re-reading I see that "use in federal law" implies ambiguity; it's not explicit about what the particular ambiguous meanings are, but I guess the implication is that there are federal laws that mean 49 states by it. I haven't found any by googling, but that's not evidence of much. --63.204.132.73 06:20, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Check my contribs in the article history to see, but the "use in federal law" language was probably mine. IIRC, i looked at some Web pages that discussed Alaska's and/or Hawaii's transition into being a state; IIRC, it appeared

• that some laws or regs were stated in terms of CONUS and others in terms of statehood,
• that it was agreed that something (involving IRS?) in the new state should be (at least for a few years) other than what the existing def of CONUS would lead to in light of its statehoood, and
• that rather than accomplish the desired effect by changing those statehood- or CONUS-sensitive provisions, they'd changed the meaning that CONUS had in that one set of contexts.

It may have been as simple as saving tax-prep firms the difference between, on one hand, inserting a letter about the definition change in their copies of the Internal Revenue Code, and, on the other, buying 5 million copies of a new edition. Or being able to make the change effective in a shorter time than the publishers could manage it. (Bear in mind that all book publishing in the '50s was much slower than is now the case for commercially hot topics.)

--Jerzy (t) 17:56, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

VfD debate

This article has been kept following this VfD debate. Sjakkalle 08:24, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Conterminous/contiguous

The articles states that conterminous is better than contiguous because not all 48 states are touching. However, not all 48 states share a common boundary either. That is, Oregon and Maryland are neither contiguous nor conterminous.

However, this objection is specious. Contiguous is very commonly used in the loose sense of "in contact", so that the 48 states are both contiguous and conterminous. In the OED, "contiguously" is used in this broader sense in all of the examples where there are more than two things in contact:

1639 Behold the Raine-Bow, and admire to see Transparant Shadowes mixt Contiguouslie.

(That is, the colors of the rainbow are contiguous, though they only contact the immediately adjacent colors)

1679 The next of kin contiguously embrace.

1822 Forty-four such eggs..laid contiguously in a right line.

The examples aren't as clear with the adjectival form, since most involve only two entities, but we do get

1874 Long rows of contiguous houses.

Thus the word contiguous is clearly correct when applied to the Lower 48.

Its definition is similar to one definition of conterminous:

Contiguous: Touching, in actual contact, next in space; meeting at a common boundary, bordering, adjoining.

Conterminous: (1) Having a common boundary, (2) bordering upon (each other).

However, conterminous is generally used with the first sense. Thus the US nation is conterminous with its states and counties (including AK and HI), because a stretch of the US border is also the border of a state and of a county. California is conterminous with Nevada and Arizona on the east, but California and Nevada are not conterminous states, because they do not have the same border overall. That is, the state of Hawaii is (more or less) conterminous with the islands of Hawaii, and the Pacific ocean is conterminous with Hawaii, but none of the states is completely conterminous with another. In the OED,

1652 The Dominion of the whole Earth..and of the conterminous Aer.

1677 In the Ports of the Sea conterminous to those Continents.

1817 Observe, that our Roman Catholic and church of England parishes, are not exactly conterminous.

1846 A township conterminous with Ilium.

1864 The estate of Dale of Allington had been coterminous with the parish of Allington for some hundreds of years.

1875 Christianity as well as civilization became conterminous with the Roman Empire.

1878 Defending the side of Germany conterminous to France.

However, the word is sometimes used more loosely, in sense (2), as in the Conterminous US:

1880 Allied species, whose ranges are separate but conterminous.

This was the only such example in the OED, and note that it was necessary to say that their ranges were separate, because if the author had only said their ranges were conterminous, we would understand this to mean that they completely overlapped.

Thus both words fit, but in general usage, contiguous is a better fit than conterminous, which only works in its secondary sense. kwami 18:42, 2005 August 15 (UTC)

Islands?

Does the US have any islands near the coast? If so, are these considered part of CONUS? gpvos 17:04, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Islands such as the Channel Islands ~50km off the coast of California are politically part of individual counties of the nearby state, and parts of Long Island are even incorporated within New York City. So yes, they're parts of the contiguous states. kwami 19:35, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

"Lower 48"

Its mentioned that this label is not factually correct because Hawaii is actaully the southernmost. Does its use come from a time before Hawaii achieved statehood?

Yep. Unschool 06:52, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I was always under the impression the "lower 48" referred to those 48 states which have the lowest numbers of statehood, therefore excluding Alaska and Hawaii. • Rlloyd3 02:33, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I really must beat this dead horse. Not only do I find it hard to believe that

The term "the lower 48 (states)" arose before Hawaii became a state,

as it would mean that the term is a remnant from the period between January 3, 1959 (before which there was no need for it) and August 21, 1959. If it was coined during this less-than-eight-month time frame, then surely the use of it would soon afterwards have ceased, had it been deemed inaccurate? But I also don't follow the argumentation for that inaccuracy:

If interpreted literally, the term would refer to all states except Alaska and Minnesota, the two northernmost states.

If interpreted literally, wouldn't it rather mean the 48 states closest to sea level? Not that this would exclude Hawaii (however you count, Hawaii is closer to sea level than for example Colorado), but it goes to show that "lower" can mean several things, and unless there is a reliable source that says that it should be taken to mean "southernmost" in this circumstance, it's pretty much just speculation. Rlloyd3's interpretation is as good as any other. Well, better, because it makes the terminology correct. I have of course googled for an actual etymology, but sadly to no avail. -- Jao 17:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

That paragraph had been really poorly written. I've changed it (removing the really dubious claim that it dates from that brief 1959 period). "Lower 48" is pretty much only used in reference to Alaska. If you look on a map, I think you can understand why. Yes, Hawaii is also "lower," but it's not located in North America so it has little else in common with the other non-Alaskan states. Funnyhat 19:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah. 48 "lower" states in North America, one that is in North America but not "lower", and one that is not in North America at all. That makes sense, both latitude- and altitude-wise. Thank you, funny hat, it is much clearer now. -- Jao 13:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Your mocking tone, Jao, obscures the point that Funnyhat is making. The evolution of the term does not have to have been logical in order for it to have occurred. Language rarely develops logically. Unschool 02:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

O...kay? I am aware that I sometimes have trouble getting all the nuances right in English – it's not an easy language – but why not assume good faith? I am geniunely grateful towards Funnyhat. -- Jao 04:37, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

My apologies. Unschool 13:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)