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The Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for 'British Encyclopædia') is a general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published since 1768 and, after several ownership changes, is currently owned by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The 15th edition, published in 2010, spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages and was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published online at Britannica.com.
Printed for 245 years, the Britannica was the longest-running in-print encyclopaedia in the English language. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland, in weekly instalments that came together to form three volumes. At first, the encyclopaedia grew quickly in size from edition to edition. The second edition expanded to 10 volumes, and by its fourth edition (1801–1810), it had expanded to 20 volumes. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, its size, measured as total word count, has remained roughly steady at about 40 million words.
Britannica's has had several notable contributors. The 9th (1875–1889) and 11th editions (1911) are considered landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary style. Starting with the 11th edition and following its acquisition by an American firm, the encyclopaedia shortened and simplified articles to broaden its appeal to the North American market. Though published in the United States since 1901, the Britannica has mostly maintained British English spellings.
In 1932, the Britannica adopted a policy of "continuous revision," in which the encyclopaedia is continually revised and reprinted, with every article updated on a schedule. The publishers of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia had already pioneered such a policy.
The 15th edition (1974–2010) 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.
In the 21st century, Britannica faced competition: initially from the digital and multimedia encyclopaedia Microsoft Encarta, and later from the online peer-produced encyclopaedia Wikipedia. While it continued to score well in assessments of overall quality, compared to its competitors, it could not (as an expert-authored compilation of a limited number of articles on important subjects only) match their breadth of coverage and continuous updating.
In March 2012, it announced it would no longer publish printed editions and would focus instead on the online version.
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