User talk:Filll/EBcomments
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Encyclopædia Britannica is a general encyclopedia published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., a privately held company. Its articles are written by a staff of 19 full-time editors and over four thousand expert contributors, and are targeted at educated adult readers.[1] The Britannica is widely considered the standard by which other encyclopedias are measured.[1][2]
Author | 4430 named contributors, including editors |
---|---|
Translator | None |
Language | English |
Subject | General |
Genre | Reference encyclopedia |
Publisher | Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
Publication date | 1768–present |
Publication place | Scotland (1768–1895) England (1895–1901) United States (1901–present) |
Media type | 32 Hardback Volumes |
ISBN | 1-59339-292-3 |
The Britannica is the oldest English-language encyclopedia still in print.[3] It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh[4] and quickly grew in popularity and size, with its third edition in 1801 reaching 20 volumes.[5] Its rising stature helped with the recruitment of eminent contributors, and the 9th edition (1875–1889) and the 11th edition (1911) are regarded as landmark encyclopedias for scholarship and literary style.[4] Beginning with the 11th edition, the Britannica gradually shortened and simplified its articles to make them more accessible and broaden its North American market.[4] In 1933, the Britannica became the first encyclopedia to adopt a "continuous revision" policy, in which the encyclopedia is continually reprinted and every article updated on a regular schedule.[5]
The current edition (the 15th) has a unique three-part structure: a 12-volume Micropædia of short articles (each generally having fewer than 750 words), a 17-volume Macropædia of long articles (having from two to 310 pages) and a single Propædia volume intended to give a hierarchical outline of all human knowledge. The Micropædia is meant for quick fact-checking and as a guide to the Macropædia. Readers are advised to study the Propædia outline to understand a subject's context and to find other, more detailed articles.[6] The size of the Britannica has remained roughly constant over the past 70 years, with about 40 million words on half a million topics.[7] Although the Encyclopædia Britannica has been published in the United States since 1901, the Britannica has maintained its traditional British spelling.[1]