Attempts at the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea at Geneva in 1958 to define the legal characteristics of islands for the purpose of delimiting continental shelf boundaries proved abortive, despite the presentation of several proposals and draft amendments to the relevant provision of the International Law Commission's 1956 Draft Articles Concerning the Law of the Sea. One difficulty the Fourth Committee faced arose from its formalistic approach. It seemed reluctant to look behind the word “islands”, and appraise different categories of islands differently. A prime example of the confusion this nominalism caused is to be found in the report of Mr. Gihl's intervention in this regard. He reasoned about offshore and coastal islands on a single continental shelf with the mainland coast in terms of islands “having a continental shelf of their own”.