I believe "America" is usually an abbreviated form of "United States of America" whereas "The Americas" is commonly used to refer to the American continents. E

I believe "America" is usually an abbreviated form of "United States of America" whereas "The Americas" is commonly used to refer to the American continents. Edit: this is a little different than your case where Europe can refer to the European continent, but "America" pretty much never refers to the two American continents.