Talk:New Zealand outlying islands

Capitalisation
I'm moving this from New Zealand Outlying Islands to New Zealand outlying islands, to match the category. I've found no official government source that lists the name in capitalised form, but numerous (e.g.,, , , , ) which use lower case. if the department of justice and the Waitangi tribunal documents use lower case, it's very likely that that's the official way of doing things. Grutness...wha?  00:50, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Plural or singular?
The Chatham Islands is or are? I note with "The Falkland Islands (/ˈfɔːklənd, ˈfɔːl-, ˈfɒl-/; Spanish: Islas Malvinas) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean" the line taken was to use the singular because the Falklands is one overseas territory and it refers to one archipelago. That was similar to my approach to the Chathans - they are one local govt area, and it is in that context they are mentioned in the article. Personally, I think the difference, is or are, is minor and will often boil down to context and personal opinion and I am not too bothered either way. I just recall the discussion on the Falklands a while ago when this same topic was raised. Any strong opinions either way? I think to be pedantic, with 'The Chatham Islands is/are an archipelago' both is/are can be used because the word order can be reversed because the verb 'be' doesn't have an object, making 'An archipelago is/are the Chatham Islands' grammatically the same, even if it sounds a bit odd. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:05, 8 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Consider some other examples - "The Channel Islands are an archipelago in the English channel", "The Hawaiian islands are an archipelago of eight major islands...", or even "The Chatham Islands (Moriori: Rēkohu, lit. 'Misty Sun'; Māori: Wharekauri) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about 800 km (430 nmi) east of New Zealand's South Island.". The Falkland islands seem to be an outlier, and we tend to use "are" even when it's clearly a singular item that just happens to a plural name. Some other examples which come to mind are bands (see, for example, The Temptations or The Chills). I can see the case to be made for using 'is', but I think are is much more grammatically correct. Turnagra (talk) 17:51, 8 November 2022 (UTC)


 * I think this is related to the difference between UK and US English for subject-verb agreement with collective nouns. In UK English, either 'is' or 'are' is acceptable, in US English 'is' is correct. see American and British English grammatical differences. However, according to the last paragraph of that section, plural names always use 'are', with a given exception of "The United States is..".- gadfium 18:58, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Hong Kong
user:Vic Park, I don't think this even warrants inclusion in the 'see also' section. What is the possible link, even indirectly. The HK outlying islands are nothing like the NZ ones. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 08:16, 18 December 2022 (UTC)


 * I was about to say that I could see merit in creating an Outlying Islands disambiguation page, but it turns out one already exists - agree that a link to Hong Kong specifically is weird, but maybe a link to the disambiguation? Turnagra (talk) 08:31, 18 December 2022 (UTC)