The 17-volume ''Macropædia'' is the third part of the ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...

''; the other two parts are the 12-volume ''

Micropædia The 12-volume ''Micropædia'' is one of the three parts of the 15th edition of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the other two being the one-volume ''Propædia'' and the 17-volume ''Macropædia''. The name ''Micropædia'' is a neologism coined by ...

'' and the 1-volume ''

Propædia The one-volume ''Propædia'' is the first of three parts of the 15th edition of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', intended as a compendium and topical organization of the 12-volume ''Micropædia'' and the 17-volume ''Macropædia,'' which are organi ...

''. The name ''Macropædia'' is a

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

coined by

Mortimer J. Adler Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for long stretches in N ...

from the

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

words for "large" and "instruction". Adler's intention was that the ''Macropædia'' serve students who wish to learn a field in depth; for comparison, the short articles of the ''Micropædia'' are intended for quick fact-checking. The ''Macropædia'' was introduced in the 15th edition (1974) with 19 volumes having 4,207 articles. In the drastic reorganization of that edition in 1985, these articles were combined and condensed into 17 volumes with roughly 700 articles, ranging in length from 2-310 pages. The longest article, on the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, resulted from the merging of the 50 articles on each

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

. The articles of the ''Macropædia'' are generally written by named contributors and have references, in contrast to the roughly 65,000 articles of the ''Micropædia'' that have no named contributor and no references. However, some parts of the ''Macropædia'' were written by the editorial staff of the ''Britannica''; such editorial articles are identified by the initials "Ed." Since its reorganization, the ''Macropædia'' has not remained constant. New articles are constantly being added, whereas older articles are sometimes split, absorbed into other articles or drastically shortened or even deleted. An example of the latter is the 1989 article on

Adhesives Adhesive, also known as glue, cement, mucilage, or paste, is any non-metallic substance applied to one or both surfaces of two separate items that binds them together and resists their separation. The use of adhesives offers certain advant ...

, which had its own article of 7 pages in the 1989 ''Macropædia'' but was merely a page in a different article of the 1991 edition.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macropaedia Encyclopædia Britannica

See also

References