User:Jamesinderbyshire/Sandbox/BritishIsles-Lead

(Copied from British Isles talk page)
(Following a discussion from the British Isles talk page on the lead section)

As above, for a geographical article there is a distinct lack of geographical information in the introduction. This would give us a four-paragraph structure which would comply with the rules. Thoughts? Wiki-Ed (talk) 13:00, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Currently the first paragraph defines the topic. Fine.
 * 2) We have nothing on context so we need a new paragraph expanding on physical elements (perhaps a chronological structure: borrow from the geology section and move on to glaciations and then the modern day)
 * 3) Notability should be covered by a second new paragraph, merging human geography (i.e. to follow from the previous paragraph) into something on the general relevance of this island group and its peoples to the rest of the world (culture, language, migrations etc).
 * 4) Controversies are more than adequately covered already.

Additional Paragraphs
Below are two new paragraphs responding to Wiki-Ed's context and notability points above.

The other paragraphs are currently unchanged.

Lead Section
The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and over six thousand smaller islands. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The British Isles also include two dependencies of the United Kingdom: the Isle of Man and, by tradition, the Channel Islands, although the latter are not physically a part of the island group.

The landscape and surface environment of the continental crust that now forms the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and the adjacent lesser isles has undergone dramatic changes during the geological history of the Earth.

The British Isles lie at the juncture of several regions with past episodes of tectonic mountain building. These orogenic belts form a complex geology which records a huge and varied span of earth history. Of particular note was the Caledonian Orogeny during the Ordovician Period, ca. 488–444 Ma and early Silurian period, when the craton Baltica collided with the terrane Avalonia to form the mountains and hills in northern Britain and Ireland. Baltica formed roughly the north western half of Ireland and Scotland. Further collisions caused the Variscan orogeny in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, forming the hills of Munster, south-west England, and south Wales. Over the last 500 million years the land which forms the islands has drifted northwest from around 30°S, crossing the equator around 370 million years ago to reach its present northern latitude.

The islands have been shaped by numerous glaciations during the Quaternary Period, the most recent being the Devensian. As this ended, the central Irish Sea was de-glaciated (whether or not there was a land bridge between Great Britain and Ireland at this time is somewhat disputed, though there was certainly a single ice sheet covering the entire sea) and the English Channel flooded, with sea levels rising to current levels some 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, leaving the British Isles in their current form.

The islands' geology is highly complex, though there are large numbers of limestone and chalk rocks that formed in the Permian and Triassic periods. The west coasts of Ireland and northern Great Britain that directly face the Atlantic Ocean are generally characterized by long peninsulas, and headlands and bays; the internal and eastern coasts are "smoother".

The term British Isles is controversial in relation to Ireland, where there are many objections to its usage due to the association of the word British with Ireland. The Government of Ireland does not use the term and its embassy in London discourages its use. In relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, the words "these islands" are sometimes used. The controversy means that Britain and Ireland is becoming a preferred description, although British Isles is still commonly employed.