Comments on: Continental VS Contiguous

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:29:59 +0000

I spent quite a few hours reading up on this today. I had a really long answer written, but I’ll forgo all of it and just say this.

I found no reference to an official “status” that makes a commonwealth not a state. Yet I found lots of references that say a commonwealth is a state. They merely have a different official title than other states. There is no state with the name “Florida”, there is the “State of Florida”. There is no Massachusetts, there is the “Commonwealth of Massachusetts”.

The fact that four decided not to use the word “state” in their title doesn’t mean that they are not technically a “state”. Their title does not change their status as a state. They can call themselves whatever they would like.

I disagree that it would be technically incorrect to say there are only 46 states. To quote the US Government Printing Office: “There is no difference between a commonwealth and a state in the U.S. [...] they merely took the old form of state in their title.

But unless someone wants to get back to the original topic… I’m going to close down comments on this thread as there are plenty of other places on the net to debate this issue.

By: Steven

Steven — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:11:44 +0000

The Great State of Texas.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:02:05 +0000

Steven, which State do you live in?

By: Steven

Steven — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:14:50 +0000

Actually, that is reversed. To paraphrase my friend above, the fact they refer to themselves as States does not change their individual constitutional statuses as commonwealths, not states. I agree, in common vernacular they are referred to as “states”. They are commonwealths nonetheless. Common American usage would agree with you. However, when you are studying the constitutions of the aforementioned locations, I am certain you will discover they are technically Commonwealths. Since this got down to a quite involved review of terminology, I was merely hoping to make sure that the correct information was distributed, common parlance aside.

By: Allen

Allen — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:40:55 +0000

Actually, those commonwealths are still “states”. The fact that they refer to themselves as commonwealths does not change their status as states in the United States of America. See any of their government websites where they refer to themselves as both commonwealths and states.

By: Steven

Steven — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:43:02 +0000

Since you have gotten micro-technical, you even have the number of total states wrong. True, in common vernacular we refer to the 50 states, but that is not true. There are only 46 states. Kentucky, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania are technically commonwealths. It doesn’t really matter much to what you are saying, but I figure if you are going to get down to the real technical level of states, you might want to get that part in check, too.