Talk:United States

Frequently asked questions

Q1. How did the article get the way it is?

Detailed discussions which led to the current consensus can be found in the archives of Talk:United States. Several topical talk archives are identified in the infobox to the right. A complete list of talk archives can be found at the top of the Talk:United States page.

Q2. Why is the article's name "United States" and not "United States of America"?

Isn't United States of America the official name of the U.S.? I would think that United States should redirect to United States of America, not vice versa as is the current case.

This has been discussed many times. Please review the summary points below and the discussion archived at the Talk:United States/Name page. The most major discussion showed a lack of consensus to either change the name or leave it as the same, so the name was kept as "United States".

If, after reading the following summary points and all the discussion, you wish to ask a question or contribute your opinion to the discussion, then please do so at Talk:United States. The only way that we can be sure of ongoing consensus is if people contribute.

Reasons and counterpoints for the article title of "United States":

• "United States" is in compliance with the Wikipedia "Naming conventions (common names)" guideline portion of the Wikipedia naming conventions policy. The guideline expresses a preference for the most commonly used name, and "United States" is the most commonly used name for the country in television programs (particularly news), newspapers, magazines, books, and legal documents, including the Constitution of the United States.
  • Exceptions to guidelines are allowed.

• If we used "United States of America", then to be consistent we would have to rename all similar articles. For example, by renaming "United Kingdom" to "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" or Mexico to "United Mexican States".
  • Exceptions to guidelines are allowed. Articles are independent from one another. No rule says articles have to copy each other.
  • This argument would be valid only if "United States of America" was a particularly uncommon name for the country.

• Well-established encyclopedias in the English language appear to generally use a "common name" policy for article titles. More specifically, the following use "United States" for the title of the corresponding article: MSN Encarta, World Book, Encyclopedia Americana, Columbia, Grolier, and the Micropaedia and online versions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In our effort to make Wikipedia an "encyclopedia of the highest possible quality," (Jimmy Wales, "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", March 8, 2005, <wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org>) we would do well to emulate what these well-established encyclopedias do.
  • The Macropaedia version of Britannica uses "United States of America" for its article title.

• With the reliability, legitimacy, and reputation of all Wikimedia Foundation projects under constant attack, Wikipedia should not hand a weapon to its critics by deviating from the "common name" policy traditionally used by encyclopedias in the English-speaking world.
  • Wikipedia is supposed to be more than just another encyclopedia.

Reasons and counterpoints for the article title of "United States of America":

• It is the country's official name.
  • The country's name is not explicitly defined as such in the Constitution or in the law. The words "United States of America" only appear three times in the Constitution. "United States" appears 51 times by itself, including in the presidential oath or affirmation. The phrase "of America" is arguably just a prepositional phrase that describes the location of the United States and is not actually part of the country's name.

• The Articles of Confederation explicitly name the country "The United States of America" in article one. While this is no longer binding law, the articles provide clear intent of the founders of the nation to use the name "The United States of America."

• The whole purpose of the common naming convention is to ease access to the articles through search engines. For this purpose the article name "United States of America" is advantageous over "United States" because it contains the strings "United States of America" and "United States." In this regard, "The United States of America" would be even better as it contains the strings "United States," The United States," "United States of America," and "The United States of America."
  • The purpose of containing more strings is to increase exposure to Wikipedia articles by increasing search rank for more terms. Although "The United States of America" would give you four times more commonly used terms for the United States, the United States article on Wikipedia is already the first result in queries for United States of America, The United States of America, The United States, and of course United States.

Q3. Is the United States really the oldest constitutional republic in the world?

1. Isn't San Marino older?

Yes. San Marino was founded before the United States and did adopt its basic law on 8 October 1600. (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sm.html) Full democracy was attained there with various new electoral laws in the 20th century which augmented rather than amended the existing constitution.

2. How about Switzerland?

Yes, but not continuously. The first "constitution" within Switzerland is believed to be the Federal Charter of 1291 and most of modern Switzerland was republican by 1600. After Napoleon and a later civil war, the current constitution was adopted in 1848.

Many people in the United States are told it is the oldest republic and has the oldest constitution, however one must use a narrow definition of constitution. Within Wikipedia articles it may be appropriate to add a modifier such as "oldest continuous, federal ..." however it is more useful to explain the strength and influence of the US constitution and political system both domestically and globally. One must also be careful using the word "democratic" due to the limited franchise in early US history and better explain the pioneering expansion of the democratic system and subsequent influence.

The component states of the Swiss confederation were mostly oligarchies in the eighteenth century, however, being much more oligarchical than most of the United States, with the exceptions of Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Connecticut.

Q4. Why are the Speaker of the House and Chief Justice listed as leaders in the infobox? Shouldn't it just be the President and Vice President?

The President, Vice President, Speaker of The House of Representatives, and Chief Justice are stated within the United States Constitution as leaders of their respective branches of government. As the three branches of government are equal, all four leaders get mentioned under the "Government" heading in the infobox.

Q5. What is the motto of the United States?

There was no de jure motto of the United States until 1956, when "In God We Trust" was made such. Various other unofficial mottos existed before that, most notably "E Pluribus Unum". The debate continues on what "E Pluribus Unum"'s current status is (de facto motto, traditional motto, etc.) but it has been determined that it never was an official motto of the United States.

Q6. Is the U.S. really the world's largest economy?

The United States was the world's largest national economy from about 1880 and largest by nominal GDP from about 2014, when it surpassed the European Union. China has been larger by Purchasing Power Parity, since about 2016.

Q7. Isn't it incorrect to refer to it as "America" or its people as "American"?

In English, America (when not preceded by "North", "Central", or "South") almost always refers to the United States. The large super-continent is called the Americas.

Q8. Why isn't the treatment of Native Americans given more weight?

The article is written in summary style and the sections "Indigenous peoples" and "European colonization" summarize the situation.

EEUU redirects here?

I cannot find any reference to EEUU and really, I never heard of that acronym. What does it mean and why does it redirects here? 91.137.120.171 (talk) 16:42, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Uhm I see in the initial edit of EEUU: "EEUU is an acronymn for "Los Estados Unidos", the spanish translation of "The United States".". 91.137.120.171 (talk) 16:46, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

See Here. It's the Spanish equivalent of "US". I agree it probably isn't the best redirect, but WP:REDIRECTSARECHEAP, so it's really not causing much harm, unless you have another, better, concept that EEUU applies to. --Jayron32 18:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Many languages recognize and even use the standard initialism in English, "USA." Spanish is one of the rare European languages that doesn't; the Spanish form is "EEUU." As you say, this redirect is really causing no harm, and it may serve a good purpose for WP readers whose first language is Spanish. 173.77.71.234 (talk) 15:37, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

USA , World Leader !

RFC: What negative aspects of the United States should be mentioned in the lead?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is no consensus for any of the proposed additions. No change to the lead. Pecopteris (talk) 08:25, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

---

What "negative" aspects of the United States should be added into the lead of the article?

• Several states lacking abortion (or other reproductive rights) compared to other developed countries
• Retention of the death penalty compared to other developed countries
• Lack of paid family lead
• Higher levels of inequality and incarceration than most developed nations. (The United States has an exceptional incarceration rate from an international perspective; its Gini is "medium")

Personally, I believe that only incarceration should be mentioned. There's been back and forth on this for awhile. (Dating back to two years ago.) And I think it is best that a consensus on all of this is reached through a RFC.

I agree that a lot of these things are bad policy. But I don't think they justify mention in the lead of the article. KlayCax (talk) 04:54, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with high incarceration (and perhaps inequality) being the only aspects mentioned in the lead section. High rates of gun violence could potentially be added as well.

The other aspects are merely controversial policies which are quite exotic compared to most other Western and developed nations, but nothing universally considered objectively bad or inherently problematic issues which need to be solved.-- Maxeto0910 (talk) 06:26, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not sure anything other than (maybe) lack of universal healthcare and (possibly) incarceration should be mentioned. The US doesn't have the highest incarceration rate in the world anymore (it's not even in the top 5), and there are parts of the US with abortion rights more liberal than that of most developed nations (also, Poland doesn't mention its lack of abortion in the lead). Inequality is not that high compared to most of the world, either. Retention of the death penalty is unremarkable, too; for example, it is not mentioned in Japan or Singapore's leads. The only thing about the US that truly stands out (and isn't necessarily "bad") is lack of universal healthcare; as far as I know, no other developed country does not provide some form of universal healthcare. Still, though, most other country's articles don't discuss "bad" properties about them in the lead, unless they are extraordinarily notable (such as Russia or China's poor human rights record). I don't know why the US's article should be different. The point of the lead is to summarize the situation of the country. The body can discuss the rest. --Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 07:56, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

(Summoned by bot). Without intending to give offense to the OP, I find the inquiry quite loaded and framed in a manner that doesn't align to rationalism or policy. These are all separate questions and should not be considered in the light of whether any one fact is 'negative', 'positive', or somewhere inbetween according to this or that editor's impressions. What's important for purposes of the WP:LEAD is what kind of WP:weight each of these topics has in the article at large, which the lead is meant to summarize. If none of the above topics meets that burden, then none of them should be included, just for the sake of creating some sort of artificial and arbitrary balance of "good" and "bad". If all of them are WP:DUE for the lead, then all of them should be included, for the same reason. With that in mind, and looking at the main body of the article, I don't think any of the four enumerated details (which share no common nexus aside from possibly being sources of criticism for some) seem particularly due for the lead. Probably the one that comes closest though is the issue of inequality. But if it's too be mentioned, it will need a couple of sentences worth of contextualization. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 08:28, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

• Not the right format. This article lead should not be discussing "negative" or "positive" aspects of the United States. The lead should be a very brief summary of the article, which itself should be a very brief summary of many many other articles. Maybe these items should be in the lead somehow, maybe they shouldn't, but that can't be determined by picking some factoids out in isolation without any context as to how they are helping to summarize the article. CMD (talk) 10:01, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
• Inappropriate I agree with most other editors here that such stuff form the RFC are selective and not appropriate for the lead. The lead is a general summary of the article which includes basic information about the US. Not a political or historical commentary to put controversial content over. The controversies can be in the article in the appropriate sections briefly mentioned, not on the lead. See WP:LEAD and WP:NOTNEWS. None of the stuff in the RFC belong in the lead as they are not noteworthy material for an introduction to the US as a country. Other material already in the intro make more sense to have on the lead - geographical size, population size, number of states, division of government, important wars (civil, WWI, WWII, etc), economic stuff like GDP, educational institutions, global achievements, etc. Examples of good basic leads are Great_Britain or France. Ramos1990 (talk) 04:12, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

• Wrong framework—as SnowRise and CMD have noted above, this subjective positive-negative binary is the wrong framework for deciding what does and does not go in the article and therefore in the lead. The article should reflect high quality sources without the perceptions and interpretations of editors seeking to filter content through their notions of 'good' or 'bad'.

إيان (talk) 15:20, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

• Comment The lead should outline the most significant ways in which the U.S. differs from other Western democracies, both negative and positive. TFD (talk) 16:37, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• The good-bad dichotomy is not a good starting place. I am sure there are plenty of people who think some of the features labelled here as "negatives" are actually "positives". The lede's (and article's) job is to simply outline the socio-anthropological outline of the country, not necessarily only in terms of salient features and certainly not in a positive-negative tit-for-tat basis. I wonder if there is a sourcing basis to also frame the country in a "New World"/"Western hemisphere" [sic] post-colonial context. Gun owning, lack of universal healthcare, the catch on of the nuclear family, inequality, GDP, ubiquitous urban sprawl, energy expenditure per person... surely underpin features of the American societal landscape. Sources may need to describe them in relation to other countries, but this is not the most important bit. I suppose that quality sources will highlight the most relevant features, hopefully putting the "positive"/"negative" framework away.--Asqueladd (talk) 17:17, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• This is a clumsy RfC that should probably be withdrawn for the reasons outlined by others. Nemov (talk) 21:23, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
• Not the right format as the lede should just be a summary of main points. Details can be (and are) elaborated later in the body of the article. Listen1st (talk) 19:22, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
• Wrong Framework - Echoing the same sentiments as above, the Lead should be a summary of the body. MaximusEditor (talk) 05:07, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
• Not the right format per others. Maybe healthcare and incarceration ought to be mentioned, but I agree that putting "negative" characteristics of countries in the leads of their articles really really deserves critical review. We wouldn't, for example, focus exclusively on the high GDP or HDI. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 01:24, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Structure of history section

Interstellarity, per your invitation, I'm opening a discussion about your merging of the New millennium and Postwar United States sections. I don't think there was anything wrong with the previous structure; the old structure increased readability for readers who wish to concentrate on a given time period, and there is enough content to warrant its own section. The argument about "most people's lifetimes" doesn't seem relevant (and isn't even really true; 2020 census data shows that 57% of the population was born after 1976). Can you discuss more about why you made that change? Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 21:04, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Sure, I'd be happy to. The division of periods of US history is and can be arbitrary. Part of the reason why I dedicated a lot of time into making a section for contemporary America that focuses on post-1945 history is that there are plenty of sources that use 1945 to the present as a way to categorize the periods of US history. I have shortened the section so that it improves readability. Britannica has a section that says US since 1945 while this site uses it as well. I have also found that the College Board divided the section in two: from 1945 to 1980 and 1980 to present which could be a possible way to divide history. As a sidenote, I am also trying to improve the History of the United States article. I have setup a lot of sections (like the Contemporary America section), so it might be a good starting point with how to improve the page. I hope this helps. Interstellarity (talk) 23:14, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Prohibition and women's suffrage dropped from the article

I notice that with this edit, any and all mention of prohibition and women's suffrage was erased from the article. Given that there are three constitutional amendments concerning these matters (18, 19 & 21), they are objectively important parts of US history and should not have been summarily deleted. -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 12:34, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Which is why they are covered in History of the United States. Can you propose something else to remove from this article so that it isn't too long? Otherwise, WP:SUMMARY makes it clear that we needn't repeat the full text of other articles. --Jayron32 13:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I've removed >4K of trivia (some stuff from the "religion" section, mostly sourced to the same author, including a twitter post). These details about who surveys say has got the most/least religion, and/or year by year estimates based on different formulations, were removed or consolidated to make space for the aforementioned Constitutional matters. The grammatical mistake (less → lower) should be fixed should it be decided to restore this stuff about who's got religion. I also removed excessive (and trivial) quotes from the "etymology" section. Further cuts could be made in that section. The section on architecture could also be condensed.

Please restore the elements about women's suffrage and prohibition. -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 06:05, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I've put back info on women's suffrage since it is an issue that directly affected half the adult citizen population (previously it was state by state) and is still law. Note one theme in American history is the expansion of civil rights (and sometimes contractions such as the time after Reconstruction). Prohibition came and went so vitally important then but its influence is more subtle now hence more suitable for the history article for fleshing out. Erp (talk) 05:02, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

That's a reasonable compromise to my eyes. Personally, given the nature of this article, I think there are arguments for a soft application of summary style, and I wouldn't oppose a brief mention of prohibition either. But I feel much more confident in agreeing that some degree of discussion of the long movement towards universal suffrage is due in this article. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 17:30, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Correction

There is an incorrect date listed under the “history” section. The article is talking about the civil war, and incorrectly lists the year 1965 instead of 1865. Manlydog39 (talk) 20:35, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

fixed, thanks. -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 21:13, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 11 August 2023

In 2019, The top countries of origin for the U.S.’s immigrants were Mexico (24 percent of immigrants), India (6 percent), China (5 percent), the Philippines (4.5 percent), and El Salvador (3 percent). Add this information to the immigration section.

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/research/immigrants_in_the_united_states_0.pdf 2600:6C50:7EF0:4A70:4598:5B87:F2FB:F342 (talk) 23:27, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

 Done ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 21:47, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 11 August 2023 (2)

Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States followed by Hispanics and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Add this information to the demographics section.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/04/09/asian-americans-are-the-fastest-growing-racial-or-ethnic-group-in-the-u-s/ 2600:6C50:7EF0:4A70:4598:5B87:F2FB:F342 (talk) 23:36, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

"Fastest growing" is an ambiguous and unhelpful descriptor. It has no clear definition, and can be misused by someone trying to push a POV. (Not saying that's you.) If there is one person in a particular category, and one more turns up, that's a growth rate of 100%. If two turn up, it's a growth rate of 200%. See the problem? "Asian American" is also ambiguous. Does it include Israelis and Saudi Arabians? HiLo48 (talk) 01:36, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Marking this request as closed for now. If a future iteration of this request needs review, it can be reopened. —⁠PlanetJuice (talk • contribs) 01:59, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

The last state admitted in the info box

Shouldn’t it say when the last state was admitted along with when the US was established? 69.204.59.102 (talk) 22:08, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Why? --Golbez (talk) 23:09, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

That was my initial reaction, but apparently at least some other country articles do list "last polity admitted" in their infoboxes in the "independence" section. For example, see India. Hmm, now that I'm looking, I'm having trouble finding any other examples. There are some obvious ones that could have them, but don't, like Canada (which added Newfoundland in 1949, previously still being a British Dominion separate from Canada). Hmmm. This should probably be brought up in whatever Wikiproject manages these things (not sure which) so as to better standardize this. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 05:31, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I suppose it makes sense for federal structures like India and the U.S., but my initial thought was, why admitted? Why not left as well? Several territories got independence after 1959. --Golbez (talk) 14:02, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

It still feels particularly trivial to me, and I don't think mechanical consistency with other countries for stuff like this is either desirable or achievable. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 21:05, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I disagree on it not being achievable. There are only about ~200 countries, even including the largely unrecognized ones, so it wouldn't be an insurmountable task. However, I'm not sure we even want this information on any of these country page infoboxes. Even the example that I did find, India, seems somewhat trivial to have in the infobox. However, that's a discussion better done either on that talk page or over at the relevant WikiProject page. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 22:26, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

It's still worth discussing here, because whatever the outcome of the infobox template discussion, it's still up to the editors on this article whether or not to adhere to it; WikiProjects do not own the articles in their scope. As an aside, what I meant by achievable consistency is that there are so many definitions of independence and whatnot. For example, the US was never a British dominion, other countries have never added polities, etc. Would France be listed as independent from the Carolingian Empire? But yes, I agree that is not a discussion for here. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 23:22, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 23 August 2023

In the final paragraph of the History section, under Contemporary United States, the hyperlink leading to the January 6 Attack misspells the work 'attack'. Change'The atack on the United States Capitol of January 6, 2021...' to 'The attack on the United States Capitol of January 6, 2021...' 38.65.114.62 (talk) 15:02, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

 Fixed --Jayron32 15:09, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

"Cumulative poverty"

"Cumulative poverty of a decade or more" is one clumsy word cluster, and it needs some elucidation. Also, "fourth-leading [note style fix] cause of death" looks incomplete. Perhaps "cause of premature death in the United States"? 173.77.71.234 (talk) 16:10, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

USA , World Leader ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.183.159.198 (talk) 15:29, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

USA , World Leader !

And at this critical moment! When 30% of the population Infected. Died. More than 1,000,000,000 . Despite all the efforts of doctors and state security services. Russian-speaking users Wikipedia. Keep searching. Sponsor's and Sponsoring. Maybe .Does not want to be infected with COVID 19. Does not want, refuses voluntarily and dutifully. Die from COVID 19. We can help! Anyway . No less than Ukry / Ukrainians. 91.183.159.198 (talk) 15:33, 26 August 2023 (UTC)