HK Britannica Micropedia Ready Reference Index 1-7

The 12-volume ''Micropædia'' is one of the three parts of the 15th edition of ''

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 being the one-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 ...

'' and the 17-volume ''

Macropædia The 17-volume ''Macropædia'' is the third part of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''; the other two parts are the 12-volume ''Micropædia'' and the 1-volume ''Propædia''. The name ''Macropædia'' is a neologism coined by Mortimer J. Adler from ...

''. The name ''Micropædia'' 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 "small" and "instruction"; the best English translation is perhaps "brief lessons". The ''Micropædia'' was introduced in 1974 with 10 volumes having 102,214 short articles, all of which were strictly fewer than 750 words. This limit was relaxed in the major re-organization of the 15th edition; many articles were condensed together, resulting in roughly 65,000 articles in 12 volumes. In general, the 750-word limit is still respected and most articles are only 1-2 paragraphs; however, a few longer articles can be found in the 2007 ''Micropædia'', such as the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

entry, which takes up a full page. With rare exceptions (<3%), the ~65,000 articles of the ''Micropædia'' have no bibliographies and no named contributors. The ''Micropædia'' is intended primarily for quick fact-checking and as a guide to the 700 longer articles of the ''Macropædia'', which do have identified authors and bibliographies.

References

Encyclopædia Britannica {{encyclopedia-stub he:המהדורה החמש-עשרה של האנציקלופדיה בריטניקה

See also

References