What's the difference between continuity and contiguity?

The difference is that continuity means something is ongoing or goes without interruption whereas contiguity means something is adjacent to or next to something else. The two contiguous things may not be attached, but they do abut (share a common border). There are 50 United States of which 48 are contiguous and two are separate. There are divergent opinions about the sun's continuity.

Continuity has to do with how things happen over time: if there aren't any bumps or breaks and everything goes on continuously, then there's continuity.

Continuity has to do with consistency. If you have the same Spanish teacher for several semesters, that's great continuity. If you have five different teachers in one year, that's awful continuity. In TV and movies, continuity involves keeping the plot and characters consistent from one scene to the next. It drives fans crazy when a character is allergic to peanuts in one episode, and then eats a peanut butter sandwich in the next one.

http://vocabulary-vocabulary.com/dictionary/contin...

se the noun contiguity when you're talking about the state of things being right up next to each other, like the contiguity of two countries that share a border.

You're most likely to come across the word contiguity in a discussion of geography. For example, you could talk about the contiguity of the United States and its northern neighbor, Canada, or the contiguity of New Hampshire and Vermont. Contiguity shares a root with the more common contiguous, the Latin contingere, which means "to touch upon."

http://www.yourdictionary.com/contiguity

continuity

The unbroken and consistent existence or operation of something over a period of time:

pension rights accruing through continuity of employment

More example sentences

The claimants' continuity of employment was unbroken.

Emphasizing the unchanging aspects of the topography, he made the case for the unbroken continuity of scriptural history with the living present.

The study is designed to provide accurate, consistent data and ensure continuity of collection methods.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/am...

contiguity

The state of bordering or being in direct contact with something:

nations bound together by geographical contiguity

More example sentences

The essence of this concept is a limited form of community interest, usually involving a small group of states in geographical contiguity, who exercise shared rights over the resources in question.

Their geographical contiguity must have come to be regarded as a zone of political proximity if not a frontier or border of some kind.

By the medieval times, linguistic violence and hatred for each other had become unbridgeable, with geographic contiguity between the Caliphates and the Byzantine empire stoking the fires of Holy War.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/am...

contiguous lacks the unity that continuance requires. contiguous is used for separate entities. continuous is used when there is no real distinction, no line of demarcation. contiguous refers to immediate proximity (in contact). a continuous thing will not have a specific location of contact, at least in terms of the thing that continues.

1,2,3,4 is a continuous series, and there is no separation within the series, even if we use contiguous numbers to denote the series.

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http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/amer...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/contiguity