The Problem with Continents and Islands

This blog will go over various ways people try to make continents and why all of them could use some improvement. If you know of a better continent definition/classification then share it with the world because the world needs it. 

One definition of  continent is that it is a continuous landmass. This is the least ambiguous definition. Basically if it's a landmass larger than Greenland or maybe Australia then it's a continent. Any island is by definition excluded except sometimes fluvial islands and temporary islands (I didn't say it was free of ambiguity).

This creates a lot of problems. Like, I can drive to visit my grandparents on the Île d'Orléans and I won't be in North America anymore? That makes no sense. Also, Afro-Eurasia would become one continent, depending how you classify canals. Aside from common sense, though, this definition is okay.

The traditional continents are the ones we are all used to. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, North America, Antarctica and sometimes Australia. These make a lot of sense (except for Europe) and actually look like real continents on a globe. These helpfully include surrounding islands so I no longer have to leave all continents to visit my grandparents.

That's not to say this is without problems, the most glaringly obvious one being: what continent is Cyprus on?

Dealing with islands is a big problem and will make people mad no matter how you do it. The inland and coastal islands are generally not problematic, but when we venture into the middle grounds in the oceans and seas, we run into problems.

I think I just made up that word, but it's the reason that North America sneakily snagged Hawaii and the Caribbean on many world maps. It also creates a basis for splitting Cyprus into two continents based on geopoliticultural lines. That makes no sense though, so here we are...

This island categorization scheme isn't the worst, but it's the reason for the problem in the first place.

Just assign the island to it's closest continent. It's what the QM did to Cyprus and it can work for you too. But this rarely gets used because... tectonic plates and politics and stuff

Because other people than me notice the problem, they draw random lines across the world hoping to classify the most random islands. It rarely works and their ideas are fairly dumb.

A short summary of my plan:

Merge Europe and Asia.

South America gets the Lesser Antilles.

Austrindomelamicropolynesia becomes a continent spanning Australia, Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.

Dumb islands like Saint Helena etc. can be forgotten about.