Peter Jans

Up to seven or as few as four geographical regions are commonly regarded as continents.

Most English-speaking countries recognise seven regions as continents.

In order from largest to smallest in area, these seven regions are Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australia.

Different variations of fewer continents merge some of these regions.

Examples of this are merging North America and South America into America, Asia and Europe into Eurasia, and Africa, Asia and Europe into Afro-Eurasia.

Oceanic islands are frequently grouped with a nearby continent to divide all the world's land into geographical regions.

Under this scheme, most of the island countries and territories in the Pacific Ocean are grouped together with the continent of Australia to form the geographical region Oceania.

In geology, a continent is defined as one of Earth's major land masses, including both dry land and continental shelves.

The geological continents correspond to seven large areas of continental crust that are found on the tectonic plates, but exclude small continental fragments, such as Madagascar, that are generally referred to as microcontinents.

Continental crust is only known to exist on Earth.

The idea of continental drift gained recognition in the 20th century.

It postulates that the current continents formed from the breaking up of a supercontinent that formed hundreds of millions of years ago.

Now on to today's mnemonic.

And the mnemonic for the seven continents in order of size is Asia and Africa are north and south and Europe alone.

So for this one, we picture Asia above Africa, as most of it is, and Europe out there all alone.

So we'll get into it.

The Asia is Asia and Africa is Africa.

R is assisting.

North is North America.

South is South America.