The Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general

knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica,

Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The encyclopaedia
is maintained by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version
of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes[1] and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition.
Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia.
Printed for 244 years, the Britannica was the longest-running in-print encyclopaedia in the
English language. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in the Scottish capital
of Edinburgh, as three volumes. The encyclopaedia grew in size: the second edition was 10
volumes,[2] and by its fourth edition (1801–1810) it had expanded to 20 volumes.[3] Its rising
stature as a scholarly work helped recruit eminent contributors, and the 9th (1875–1889)
and 11th editions (1911) are landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary style. Starting
with the 11th edition and following its acquisition by an American firm, the Britannica shortened
and simplified articles to broaden its appeal to the North American market. In 1933,
the Britannica became the first encyclopaedia to adopt "continuous revision", in which the
encyclopaedia is continually reprinted, with every article updated on a schedule.[citation needed] In the
21st century, the Britannica has suffered due to competition with the online crowdsourced
encyclopedia Wikipedia,[4][5][6] although the Britannica was previously suffering from competition
with the digital multimedia encyclopedia Microsoft Encarta.[7] In March 2012, it announced it
would no longer publish printed editions and would focus instead on the online version.[8]
[5]
Britannica has been assessed to be politically closer to the centre of the US political spectrum
than Wikipedia.[9]
The 15th edition has a three-part structure: a 12-volume Micropædia of short articles (generally
fewer than 750 words), a 17-volume Macropædia of long articles (two to 310 pages), and a
single Propædia volume to give a hierarchical outline of knowledge. The Micropædia was 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 more detailed articles. Over 70
years, the size of the Britannica has remained steady, with about 40 million words on half a
million topics.[citation needed] Though published in the United States since 1901, the Britannica has for
the most part maintained British English spelling.

Present status[edit]
Print version[edit]

15th edition of the Britannica. The initial volume

with the green spine is the Propædia; the red-spined and black-spined volumes are
the Micropædia and the Macropædia, respectively. The last three volumes are the 2002 Book
of the Year (black spine) and the two-volume index (cyan spine).
Since 1985, the Britannica had four parts: the Micropædia, the Macropædia, the Propædia, and a
two-volume index. The Britannica's articles are found in the Micro- and Macropædia, which
encompass 12 and 17 volumes, respectively, each volume having roughly one thousand pages.
The 2007 Macropædia has 699 in-depth articles, ranging in length from 2 to 310 pages and
having references and named contributors. In contrast, the 2007 Micropædia has roughly 65,000
articles, the vast majority (about 97%) of which contain fewer than 750 words, no references, and
no named contributors.[10] The Micropædia articles are intended for quick fact-checking and to
help in finding more thorough information in the Macropædia. The Macropædia articles are
meant both as authoritative, well-written articles on their subjects and as storehouses of
information not covered elsewhere.[11] The longest article (310 pages) is on the United States, and
resulted from the merger of the articles on the individual states. A 2013 "Global Edition"
of Britannica contained approximately forty thousand articles.[12]
Information can be found in the Britannica by following the cross-references in
the Micropædia and Macropædia; however, these are sparse, averaging one cross-reference per
page.[13] Hence, readers are instead recommended to consult the alphabetical index or
the Propædia, which organizes the Britannica's contents by topic.[14]
The core of the Propædia is its "Outline of Knowledge", which aims to provide a logical
framework for all human knowledge.[15] Accordingly, the Outline is consulted by
the Britannica's editors to decide which articles should be included in
the Micro- and Macropædia.[15] The Outline is also intended to be a study guide, to put subjects in
their proper perspective, and to suggest a series of Britannica articles for the student wishing to
learn a topic in depth.[15] However, libraries have found that it is scarcely used, and reviewers
have recommended that it be dropped from the encyclopaedia.[16] The Propædia also has color
transparencies of human anatomy and several appendices listing the staff members, advisors,
and contributors to all three parts of the Britannica.
Taken together, the Micropædia and Macropædia comprise roughly 40 million words and 24,000
images.[14] The two-volume index has 2,350 pages, listing the 228,274 topics covered in
the Britannica, together with 474,675 subentries under those topics.[13] The Britannica generally
prefers British spelling over American;[13] for example, it
uses colour (not color), centre (not center), and encyclopaedia (not encyclopedia). However,
there are exceptions to this rule, such as defense rather than defence.[17][original research?] Common
alternative spellings are provided with cross-references such as "Color: see Colour."
Since 1936, the articles of the Britannica have been revised on a regular schedule, with at least
10% of them considered for revision each year.[13][18] According to one Britannica website, 46% of
its articles were revised over the past three years;[19] however, according to another Britannica
website, only 35% of the articles were revised.[20]
The alphabetization of articles in the Micropædia and Macropædia follows strict rules.
[21]
Diacritical marks and non-English letters are ignored, while numerical entries such as "1812,
War of" are alphabetized as if the number had been written out ("Eighteen-twelve, War of").
Articles with identical names are ordered first by persons, then by places, then by things. Rulers
with identical names are organized first alphabetically by country and then by chronology;
thus, Charles III of France precedes Charles I of England, listed in Britannica as the ruler of
Great Britain and Ireland. (That is, they are alphabetized as if their titles were "Charles, France,
3" and "Charles, Great Britain and Ireland, 1".) Similarly, places that share names are organized
alphabetically by country, then by ever-smaller political divisions.