137-621: An encyclopedia ( American English ) or encyclopaedia ( British English ) (from Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία meaning 'general education') is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge , either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by article name or by thematic categories, or else are hyperlinked and searchable. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries . Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning
274-707: A cot–caught merger , which is rapidly spreading throughout the whole country. However, the South, Inland North, and a Northeastern coastal corridor passing through Rhode Island, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore typically preserve an older cot–caught distinction. For that Northeastern corridor, the realization of the THOUGHT vowel is particularly marked , as depicted in humorous spellings, like in tawk and cawfee ( talk and coffee ), which intend to represent it being tense and diphthongal : [oə] . A split of TRAP into two separate phonemes , using different
411-574: A knowledge worker in performing research and making decisions, including steps such as: Stewart (2001) argues that transformation of information into knowledge is critical, lying at the core of value creation and competitive advantage for the modern enterprise. In a biological framework, Mizraji has described information as an entity emerging from the interaction of patterns with receptor systems (eg: in molecular or neural receptors capable of interacting with specific patterns, information emerges from those interactions). In addition, he has incorporated
548-520: A pronunciations for example in gap [æ] versus gas [eə] , further defines New York City as well as Philadelphia–Baltimore accents. Most Americans preserve all historical /r/ sounds, using what is known as a rhotic accent . The only traditional r -dropping (or non-rhoticity) in regional U.S. accents variably appears today in eastern New England , New York City , and some of the former plantation South primarily among older speakers (and, relatedly, some African-American Vernacular English across
685-428: A CD-ROM disc. The user would execute the encyclopedia's software program to see a menu that allowed them to start browsing the encyclopedia's articles, and most encyclopedias also supported a way to search the contents of the encyclopedia. The article text was usually hyperlinked and also included photographs , audio clips (for example in articles about historical speeches or musical instruments), and video clips . In
822-603: A Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts'), better known as Encyclopédie ( French: [ɑ̃siklɔpedi] ), was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It had many writers, known as the Encyclopédistes . It was edited by Denis Diderot and, until 1759, co-edited by Jean le Rond d'Alembert . The Encyclopédie
959-734: A compendium of articles (either wholly or partially taken) from a specific encyclopedia. Four major elements define an encyclopedia: its subject matter, its scope, its method of organization, and its method of production: Some works entitled "dictionaries" are similar to encyclopedias, especially those concerned with a particular field (such as the Dictionary of the Middle Ages , the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships , and Black's Law Dictionary ). The Macquarie Dictionary , Australia's national dictionary, became an encyclopedic dictionary after its first edition in recognition of
1096-631: A complex phenomenon of "both convergence and divergence": some accents are homogenizing and leveling , while others are diversifying and deviating further away from one another. Having been settled longer than the American West Coast, the East Coast has had more time to develop unique accents, and it currently comprises three or four linguistically significant regions, each of which possesses English varieties both different from each other as well as quite internally diverse: New England ,
1233-447: A consonant, such as in pearl , car and fort . Non-rhotic American accents, those that do not pronounce ⟨r⟩ except before a vowel, such as some accents of Eastern New England , New York City , and African-Americans , and a specific few (often older ones) spoken by Southerners , are often quickly noticed by General American listeners and perceived as sounding especially ethnic, regional, or antiquated. Rhoticity
1370-435: A function must exist, even if it is not accessible for humans; A view surmised by Albert Einstein with the assertion that " God does not play dice ". Modern astronomy cites the mechanical sense of information in the black hole information paradox , positing that, because the complete evaporation of a black hole into Hawking radiation leaves nothing except an expanding cloud of homogeneous particles, this results in
1507-440: A global or a limited range of knowledge), cultural perspective (authoritative, ideological, didactic, utilitarian), authorship (qualifications, style), readership (education level, background, interests, capabilities), and the technologies available for their production and distribution (hand-written manuscripts, small or large print runs, Internet). As a valued source of reliable information compiled by experts, printed versions found
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#17327662966671644-567: A license compatible with Misplaced Pages, including Enciclopedia Libre (2002–2021) in Spanish and Conservapedia (2006–), Scholarpedia (2006–), and Citizendium (2007–) in English, the latter of which had become inactive by 2014. American English American English , sometimes called United States English or U.S. English , is the set of varieties of the English language native to
1781-591: A merger with the THOUGHT ( caught ) set. Having taken place prior to the unrounding of the cot vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the THOUGHT vowel in the following environments: before many instances of /f/ , /θ/ , and particularly /s/ (as in Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often, etc.), a few instances before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long, wrong ), and variably by region or speaker in gone , on , and certain other words. Unlike American accents,
1918-456: A more continuous form. Information is not knowledge itself, but the meaning that may be derived from a representation through interpretation. The concept of information is relevant or connected to various concepts, including constraint , communication , control , data , form , education , knowledge , meaning , understanding , mental stimuli , pattern , perception , proposition , representation , and entropy . Information
2055-636: A nice day , for sure); many are now distinctly old-fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey , boost, bulldoze and jazz , originated as American slang. American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs . Examples of nouns that are now also verbs are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan, estimate, X-ray, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation , major, and many others. Compounds coined in
2192-434: A nutritional function. The cognitive scientist and applied mathematician Ronaldo Vigo argues that information is a concept that requires at least two related entities to make quantitative sense. These are, any dimensionally defined category of objects S, and any of its subsets R. R, in essence, is a representation of S, or, in other words, conveys representational (and hence, conceptual) information about S. Vigo then defines
2329-553: A posed question. Whether the answer provides knowledge depends on the informed person. So a generalized definition of the concept should be: "Information" = An answer to a specific question". When Marshall McLuhan speaks of media and their effects on human cultures, he refers to the structure of artifacts that in turn shape our behaviors and mindsets. Also, pheromones are often said to be "information" in this sense. These sections are using measurements of data rather than information, as information cannot be directly measured. It
2466-480: A process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa. Additionally, firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English (particularly in contrast to
2603-404: A prominent place in libraries , schools and other educational institutions. The appearance of digital and open-source versions in the 21st century, such as Misplaced Pages (combining with the wiki website format), has vastly expanded the accessibility, authorship, readership, and variety of encyclopedia entries. Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around
2740-680: A series of other vowel shifts in the same region, known by linguists as the " Inland North ". The Inland North shares with the Eastern New England dialect (including Boston accents ) a backer tongue positioning of the GOOSE /u/ vowel (to [u] ) and the MOUTH /aʊ/ vowel (to [ɑʊ~äʊ] ) in comparison to the rest of the country. Ranging from northern New England across the Great Lakes to Minnesota, another Northern regional marker
2877-525: A survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about their specific everyday word choices, hoping to identify regionalisms. The study found that most Americans prefer the term sub for a long sandwich, soda (but pop in the Great Lakes region and generic coke in the South) for a sweet and bubbly soft drink , you or you guys for the plural of you (but y'all in
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#17327662966673014-398: A type of input to an organism or system . Inputs are of two kinds; some inputs are important to the function of the organism (for example, food) or system ( energy ) by themselves. In his book Sensory Ecology biophysicist David B. Dusenbery called these causal inputs. Other inputs (information) are important only because they are associated with causal inputs and can be used to predict
3151-453: A variation of American English in these islands. In 2021, about 245 million Americans, aged 5 or above, spoke English at home: a majority of the United States total population of roughly 330 million people. The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, but English is commonly used at the federal level and in states without an official language. 32 of the 50 states, in some cases as part of what has been called
3288-901: Is entropy . Entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty involved in the value of a random variable or the outcome of a random process . For example, identifying the outcome of a fair coin flip (with two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy) than specifying the outcome from a roll of a die (with six equally likely outcomes). Some other important measures in information theory are mutual information , channel capacity, error exponents , and relative entropy . Important sub-fields of information theory include source coding , algorithmic complexity theory , algorithmic information theory , and information-theoretic security . Applications of fundamental topics of information theory include source coding/ data compression (e.g. for ZIP files ), and channel coding/ error detection and correction (e.g. for DSL ). Its impact has been crucial to
3425-589: Is a German-language encyclopedia which until 2009 was published by the F. A. Brockhaus printing house. The first edition originated in the Conversations-Lexikon published by Renatus Gotthelf Löbel and Franke in Leipzig 1796–1808. Renamed Der Große Brockhaus in 1928 and Brockhaus Enzyklopädie from 1966, the current 21st thirty-volume edition contains about 300,000 entries on about 24,000 pages, with about 40,000 maps, graphics and tables. It
3562-416: Is a linguistic work that primarily focuses on an alphabetical listing of words and their definitions . Synonymous words and those related by the subject matter are to be found scattered around the dictionary, giving no obvious place for in-depth treatment. Thus, a dictionary typically provides limited information , analysis or background for the word defined. While it may offer a definition, it may leave
3699-434: Is a major concept in both classical physics and quantum mechanics , encompassing the ability, real or theoretical, of an agent to predict the future state of a system based on knowledge gathered during its past and present. Determinism is a philosophical theory holding that causal determination can predict all future events, positing a fully predictable universe described by classical physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace as "
3836-504: Is a set that the sender and receiver of information must know before exchanging information. Digital information, for example, consists of building blocks that are all number sequences. Each number sequence represents a selection from its domain. The sender and receiver of digital information (number sequences) must know the domain and binary format of each number sequence before exchanging information. By defining number sequences online, this would be systematically and universally usable. Before
3973-654: Is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South. American accents that have not undergone the cot–caught merger (the lexical sets LOT and THOUGHT ) have instead retained a LOT – CLOTH split : a 17th-century distinction in which certain words (labeled as the CLOTH lexical set ) separated away from the LOT set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent CLOTH set into
4110-611: Is also found in dictionaries, and vice versa. In particular, dictionary entries often contain factual information about the thing named by the word. The earliest encyclopedic work to have survived to modern times is the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder , a Roman statesman living in the 1st century AD, a work indebted to Varro (1st century BCE). He compiled a work of 37 chapters covering natural history , architecture, medicine, geography , geology, and all aspects of
4247-664: Is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian Pidgin , and some Hawaii residents speak English with a Pidgin-influenced accent. American English also gave rise to some dialects outside the country, for example, Philippine English , beginning during the American occupation of the Philippines and subsequently the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands ; Thomasites first established
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4384-420: Is always conveyed as the content of a message. Information can be encoded into various forms for transmission and interpretation (for example, information may be encoded into a sequence of signs , or transmitted via a signal ). It can also be encrypted for safe storage and communication. The uncertainty of an event is measured by its probability of occurrence. Uncertainty is inversely proportional to
4521-532: Is an uncountable mass noun . Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification , storage , and communication of information. The field itself was fundamentally established by the work of Claude Shannon in the 1940s, with earlier contributions by Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley in the 1920s. The field is at the intersection of probability theory , statistics , computer science, statistical mechanics , information engineering , and electrical engineering . A key measure in information theory
4658-538: Is common in most American accents despite being now rare in England because, during the 17th-century British colonization, nearly all dialects of English were rhotic, and most North American English simply remained that way. The preservation of rhoticity in North America was also supported by continuing waves of rhotic-accented Scotch-Irish immigrants, most intensely during the 18th century (and moderately during
4795-472: Is estimated that the world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986 – which is the informational equivalent to less than one 730-MB CD-ROM per person (539 MB per person) – to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007. This is the informational equivalent of almost 61 CD-ROM per person in 2007. The world's combined technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks
4932-416: Is forecast to increase rapidly, reaching 64.2 zettabytes in 2020. Over the next five years up to 2025, global data creation is projected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes. Records are specialized forms of information. Essentially, records are information produced consciously or as by-products of business activities or transactions and retained because of their value. Primarily, their value is as evidence of
5069-451: Is log 2 (4/1) = 2 bits. A 2011 Science article estimates that 97% of technologically stored information was already in digital bits in 2007 and that the year 2002 was the beginning of the digital age for information storage (with digital storage capacity bypassing analogue for the first time). Information can be defined exactly by set theory: "Information is a selection from the domain of information". The "domain of information"
5206-422: Is mainly (but not only, e.g. plants can grow in the direction of the light source) a causal input to plants but for animals it only provides information. The colored light reflected from a flower is too weak for photosynthesis but the visual system of the bee detects it and the bee's nervous system uses the information to guide the bee to the flower, where the bee often finds nectar or pollen, which are causal inputs,
5343-463: 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 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
5480-596: Is most famous for representing the thought of the Enlightenment . According to Denis Diderot in the article "Encyclopédie", the Encyclopédies aim was "to change the way people think" and for people to be able to inform themselves and to know things. He and the other contributors advocated for the secularization of learning away from the Jesuits . Diderot wanted to incorporate all of the world's knowledge into
5617-494: Is necessary to know". Among the areas covered were: grammar , rhetoric , mathematics , geometry , music , astronomy , medicine , law , the Catholic Church and heretical sects, pagan philosophers , languages , cities , animals and birds , the physical world , geography , public buildings , roads , metals , rocks , agriculture , ships , clothes , food , and tools . Another Christian encyclopedia
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5754-420: Is often identified by Americans as a "country" accent, and is defined by the /aɪ/ vowel losing its gliding quality : [aː] , the initiation event for a complicated Southern vowel shift, including a " Southern drawl " that makes short front vowels into distinct-sounding gliding vowels . The fronting of the vowels of GOOSE , GOAT , MOUTH , and STRUT tends to also define Southern accents as well as
5891-414: Is often processed iteratively: Data available at one step are processed into information to be interpreted and processed at the next step. For example, in written text each symbol or letter conveys information relevant to the word it is part of, each word conveys information relevant to the phrase it is part of, each phrase conveys information relevant to the sentence it is part of, and so on until at
6028-438: Is put to use when the business subsequently wants to identify the most popular or least popular dish. Information can be transmitted in time, via data storage , and space, via communication and telecommunication . Information is expressed either as the content of a message or through direct or indirect observation . That which is perceived can be construed as a message in its own right, and in that sense, all information
6165-705: Is the common language at home, in public, and in government. Information Information is an abstract concept that refers to something which has the power to inform . At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the interpretation (perhaps formally ) of that which may be sensed , or their abstractions . Any natural process that is not completely random and any observable pattern in any medium can be said to convey some amount of information. Whereas digital signals and other data use discrete signs to convey information, other phenomena and artifacts such as analogue signals , poems , pictures , music or other sounds , and currents convey information in
6302-437: Is the largest German-language printed encyclopedia in the 21st century. In the United States, the 1950s and 1960s saw the introduction of several large popular encyclopedias, often sold on installment plans. The best known of these were World Book and Funk and Wagnalls . As many as 90% were sold door to door . Jack Lynch says in his book You Could Look It Up that encyclopedia salespeople were so common that they became
6439-469: Is the variable fronting of /ɑ/ before /r/ , for example, appearing four times in the stereotypical Boston shibboleth Park the car in Harvard Yard . Several other phenomena serve to distinguish regional U.S. accents. Boston , Pittsburgh , Upper Midwestern , and Western U.S. accents have fully completed a merger of the LOT vowel with the THOUGHT vowel ( /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ , respectively):
6576-647: The Etymologiae ( c. 600–625 ), also known by classicists as the Origines (abbreviated Orig .). This encyclopedia—the first such Christian epitome —formed a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 books based on hundreds of classical sources, including the Naturalis Historia . Of the Etymologiae in its time it was said quaecunque fere sciri debentur , "practically everything that it
6713-649: The Four Great Books of Song , compiled by the 11th century during the early Song dynasty (960–1279), was a massive literary undertaking for the time. The last encyclopedia of the four, the Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau , amounted to 9.4 million Chinese characters in 1,000 written volumes. The Yongle Encyclopedia (completed 1408) comprised 11,095 volumes. There were many great encyclopedists throughout Chinese history, including
6850-523: The Encyclopédie and hoped that the text could disseminate all this information to the public and future generations. Thus, it is an example of democratization of knowledge . The Encyclopædia Britannica ( Latin for 'British Encyclopaedia') 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
6987-482: The English-only movement , have adopted legislation granting official or co-official status to English. Typically only "English" is specified, not a particular variety like American English. (From 1923 to 1969, the state of Illinois recognized its official language as "American", meaning American English.) Puerto Rico is the largest example of a United States territory in which another language – Spanish –
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#17327662966677124-565: The GNUPedia , an online encyclopedia which, similar to the GNU operating system , would be a "generic" resource. The concept was very similar to Interpedia, but more in line with Stallman's GNU philosophy. It was not until Nupedia and later Misplaced Pages that a stable 💕 project was able to be established on the Internet. The English Misplaced Pages , which was started in 2001, became
7261-622: The Mid-Atlantic states (including a New York accent as well as a unique Philadelphia–Baltimore accent ), and the South . As of the 20th century, the middle and eastern Great Lakes area , Chicago being the largest city with these speakers, also ushered in certain unique features, including the fronting of the LOT /ɑ/ vowel in the mouth toward [a] and tensing of the TRAP /æ/ vowel wholesale to [eə] . These sound changes have triggered
7398-551: The Native American languages . Examples of such names are opossum , raccoon , squash , moose (from Algonquian ), wigwam , and moccasin . American English speakers have integrated traditionally non-English terms and expressions into the mainstream cultural lexicon; for instance, en masse , from French ; cookie , from Dutch ; kindergarten from German , and rodeo from Spanish . Landscape features are often loanwords from French or Spanish, and
7535-629: The Renaissance , the creation of printing allowed a wider diffusion of encyclopedias and every scholar could have his or her copy. The De expetendis et fugiendis rebus by Giorgio Valla was posthumously printed in 1501 by Aldo Manuzio in Venice . This work followed the traditional scheme of liberal arts. However, Valla added the translation of ancient Greek works on mathematics (firstly by Archimedes ), newly discovered and translated. The Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch , printed in 1503,
7672-722: The francophile tastes of the 19th century Victorian era Britain (for example they preferred programme for program , manoeuvre for maneuver , cheque for check , etc.). AmE almost always uses -ize in words like realize . BrE prefers -ise , but also uses -ize on occasion (see: Oxford spelling ). There are a few differences in punctuation rules. British English is more tolerant of run-on sentences , called " comma splices " in American English, and American English prefers that periods and commas be placed inside closing quotation marks even in cases in which British rules would place them outside. American English also favors
7809-496: 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. In the 21st century, the Britannica suffered first from competition with
7946-709: The 18th century; apartment , shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium , townhouse , mobile home in the 20th century; and parts thereof ( driveway , breezeway, backyard ) . Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through railroading (see further at rail terminology ) and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads ( dirt roads , freeways ) to infrastructure ( parking lot , overpass , rest area ), to automotive terminology often now standard in English internationally. Already existing English words—such as store , shop , lumber —underwent shifts in meaning; others remained in
8083-546: The 20th century. The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas . The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing
8220-627: The British form is a back-formation , such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar ). However, while individuals usually use one or the other, both forms will be widely understood and mostly used alongside each other within the two systems. While written American English is largely standardized across the country and spoken American English dialects are highly mutually intelligible, there are still several recognizable regional and ethnic accents and lexical distinctions. The regional sounds of present-day American English are reportedly engaged in
8357-496: The CD-ROM age, the video clips had usually a low resolution, often 160x120 or 320x240 pixels. Such encyclopedias which made use of photos, audio and video were also called multimedia encyclopedias . Microsoft 's Encarta , launched in 1993, was a landmark example as it had no printed equivalent. Articles were supplemented with video and audio files as well as numerous high-quality images. After sixteen years, Microsoft discontinued
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#17327662966678494-413: The East Coast (perhaps in imitation of 19th-century London speech), even the East Coast has gradually begun to restore rhoticity, due to it becoming nationally prestigious in the 20th century. The pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ is a postalveolar approximant [ ɹ̠ ] or retroflex approximant [ ɻ ] , but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the approximant r sound
8631-707: The Encarta line of products in 2009. Other examples of CD-ROM encyclopedia are Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia and Britannica . Digital encyclopedias enable "Encyclopedia Services" (such as Wikimedia Enterprise ) to facilitate programmatic access to the content. The concept of a 💕 began with the Interpedia proposal on Usenet in 1993, which outlined an Internet-based online encyclopedia to which anyone could submit content that would be freely accessible. Early projects in this vein included Everything2 and Open Site . In 1999, Richard Stallman proposed
8768-718: The Greek alphabet. From India, the Siribhoovalaya (Kannada: ಸಿರಿಭೂವಲಯ), dated between 800 A.D. to 15th century, is a work of Kannada literature written by Kumudendu Muni , a Jain monk. It is unique because rather than employing alphabets, it is composed entirely in Kannada numerals . Many philosophies which existed in the Jain classics are eloquently and skillfully interpreted in the work. The enormous encyclopedic work in China of
8905-571: The Inland North. Rather than one particular accent, General American is best defined as an umbrella covering an American accent that does not incorporate features associated with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. Typical General American features include rhoticity , the father–bother merger , Mary–marry–merry merger , pre-nasal "short a " tensing , and other particular vowel sounds . General American features are embraced most by Americans who are highly educated or in
9042-457: The Roman authors Quintillian and Pliny described an ancient genre. The modern encyclopedia evolved from the dictionary in the 18th century; this lineage can be seen in the alphabetical order of print encyclopedias. Historically, both encyclopedias and dictionaries have been compiled by well-educated, well-informed content experts , but they are significantly different in structure. A dictionary
9179-573: The South), sneakers for athletic shoes (but often tennis shoes outside the Northeast), and shopping cart for a cart used for carrying supermarket goods. American English and British English (BrE) often differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a much lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first large American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language , known as Webster's Dictionary ,
9316-572: The Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves – to give its full title. Organized alphabetically, its content does indeed contain an explanation not merely of the terms used in the arts and sciences, but of the arts and sciences themselves. Sir Isaac Newton contributed his only published work on chemistry to the second volume of 1710. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers ( French for 'Encyclopedia, or
9453-528: The U.S. Several verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, weatherize , etc.; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, curate, donate, emote, upholster and enthuse). Among syntactic constructions that arose are outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, etc. Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, buddy, sundae , skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in
9590-570: The U.S. are for instance foothill , landslide (in all senses), backdrop , teenager , brainstorm , bandwagon , hitchhike , smalltime, and a huge number of others. Other compound words have been founded based on industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door sedan, two-door sedan, and station-wagon (called an estate car in British English). Some are euphemistic ( human resources , affirmative action , correctional facility ). Many compound nouns have
9727-676: The U.S. are, for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky . A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States have since disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots . Terms such as fall ("autumn"), faucet ("tap"), diaper ("nappy"; itself unused in
9864-530: The U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and spoken language of the United States. From the world of business and finance came new terms ( merger , downsize , bottom line ), from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside, common everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball . The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North America ( elevator [except in
10001-427: The U.S.), candy ("sweets"), skillet , eyeglasses , and obligate are often regarded as Americanisms. Fall for example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year." Gotten ( past participle of get ) is often considered to be largely an Americanism. Other words and meanings were brought back to Britain from
10138-597: The U.S., especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), I guess (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler ), baggage , hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently ("currently"). Some of these, for example, monkey wrench and wastebasket , originated in 19th century Britain. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (and Irish) English than British English. Linguist Bert Vaux created
10275-538: The United States and the United Kingdom suggest that, while spoken American English deviated away from period British English in many ways, it is conservative in a few other ways, preserving certain features 21st-century British English has since lost. Full rhoticity (or "R-fulness") is typical of American accents, pronouncing the phoneme /r/ (corresponding to the letter ⟨r⟩ ) in all environments, including in syllable-final position or before
10412-524: The United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States ; the de facto common language used in government, education, and commerce; and an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states . Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide. Varieties of American English include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around
10549-605: The West and Midwest, and New York Latino English , spoken in the New York metropolitan area . Additionally, ethnic varieties such as Yeshiva English and " Yinglish " are spoken by some American Orthodox Jews , Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern Louisiana , and Pennsylvania Dutch English by some Pennsylvania Dutch people. American Indian Englishes have been documented among diverse Indian tribes. The island state of Hawaii , though primarily English-speaking,
10686-555: The accents spoken in the " Midland ": a vast band of the country that constitutes an intermediate dialect region between the traditional North and South. Western U.S. accents mostly fall under the General American spectrum. Below, ten major American English accents are defined by their particular combinations of certain vowel sounds: In 2010, William Labov noted that Great Lakes, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and West Coast accents have undergone "vigorous new sound changes" since
10823-435: The activities of the organization but they may also be retained for their informational value. Sound records management ensures that the integrity of records is preserved for as long as they are required. The international standard on records management, ISO 15489, defines records as "information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in
10960-505: The aeronautical sense ], gasoline ) as did certain automotive terms ( truck , trunk ). New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish ( chutzpah , schmooze, bupkis, glitch ) and German ( hamburger , wiener ). A large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from OK and cool to nerd and 24/7 ), while others have not ( have
11097-419: The amount of information that R conveys about S as the rate of change in the complexity of S whenever the objects in R are removed from S. Under "Vigo information", pattern, invariance, complexity, representation, and information – five fundamental constructs of universal science – are unified under a novel mathematical framework. Among other things, the framework aims to overcome
11234-401: The association between signs and behaviour. Semantics can be considered as the study of the link between symbols and their referents or concepts – particularly the way that signs relate to human behavior. Syntax is concerned with the formalism used to represent a message. Syntax as an area studies the form of communication in terms of the logic and grammar of sign systems. Syntax is devoted to
11371-427: The biological order and participating in the development of multicellular organisms, precedes by millions of years the emergence of human consciousness and the creation of the scientific culture that produced the chemical nomenclature. Systems theory at times seems to refer to information in this sense, assuming information does not necessarily involve any conscious mind, and patterns circulating (due to feedback ) in
11508-447: The butt of jokes. He describes their sales pitch saying, "They were selling not books but a lifestyle, a future, a promise of social mobility." A 1961 World Book ad said, "You are holding your family's future in your hands right now," while showing a feminine hand holding an order form. As of the 1990s, two of the most prominent encyclopedias published in the United States were Collier's Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Americana . By
11645-403: The chosen language in terms of its agreed syntax and semantics. The sender codes the message in the language and sends the message as signals along some communication channel (empirics). The chosen communication channel has inherent properties that determine outcomes such as the speed at which communication can take place, and over what distance. The existence of information about a closed system
11782-415: The context of some social situation. The social situation sets the context for the intentions conveyed (pragmatics) and the form of communication. In a communicative situation intentions are expressed through messages that comprise collections of inter-related signs taken from a language mutually understood by the agents involved in the communication. Mutual understanding implies that agents involved understand
11919-406: The country), though the vowel-consonant cluster found in "bird", "work", "hurt", "learn", etc. usually retains its r pronunciation, even in these non-rhotic American accents. Non-rhoticity among such speakers is presumed to have arisen from their upper classes' close historical contact with England, imitating London's r -dropping, a feature that has continued to gain prestige throughout England from
12056-471: The digital multimedia encyclopaedia Microsoft Encarta , and later with the online peer-produced encyclopaedia Misplaced Pages . In March 2012, it announced it would no longer publish printed editions and would focus instead on the online version. Britannica has been assessed as being more politically centrist compared to Misplaced Pages, which is considered to have a more left-leaning orientation. The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie ( German for Brockhaus Encyclopedia )
12193-614: The diverse regional dialects of British English) became common after the mid-18th century, while at the same time speakers' identification with this new variety increased. Since the 18th century, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that retain minor influences from waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages. Some racial and regional variation in American English reflects these groups' geographic settlement, their de jure or de facto segregation, and patterns in their resettlement. This can be seen, for example, in
12330-742: The double quotation mark ("like this") over the single ('as here'). Vocabulary differences vary by region. For example, autumn is used more commonly in the United Kingdom, whereas fall is more common in American English. Some other differences include: aerial (United Kingdom) vs. antenna, biscuit (United Kingdom) vs. cookie/cracker, car park (United Kingdom) vs. parking lot, caravan (United Kingdom) vs. trailer, city centre (United Kingdom) vs. downtown, flat (United Kingdom) vs. apartment, fringe (United Kingdom) vs. bangs, and holiday (United Kingdom) vs. vacation. AmE sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas BrE uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where
12467-401: The effect of its past and the cause of its future ". Quantum physics instead encodes information as a wave function , which prevents observers from directly identifying all of its possible measurements . Prior to the publication of Bell's theorem , determinists reconciled with this behavior using hidden variable theories , which argued that the information necessary to predict the future of
12604-437: The exchanged digital number sequence, an efficient unique link to its online definition can be set. This online-defined digital information (number sequence) would be globally comparable and globally searchable. The English word "information" comes from Middle French enformacion/informacion/information 'a criminal investigation' and its etymon, Latin informatiō(n) 'conception, teaching, creation'. In English, "information"
12741-417: The final step information is interpreted and becomes knowledge in a given domain . In a digital signal , bits may be interpreted into the symbols, letters, numbers, or structures that convey the information available at the next level up. The key characteristic of information is that it is subject to interpretation and processing. The derivation of information from a signal or message may be thought of as
12878-517: The following two centuries) when this ethnic group eventually made up one-seventh of the colonial population. Scotch-Irish settlers spread from Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout the larger Mid-Atlantic region, the inland regions of both the South and North, and throughout the West: American dialect areas that were all uninfluenced by upper-class non-rhoticity and that consequently have remained consistently rhotic. While non-rhoticity spread on
13015-448: The formation and development of an organism without any need for a conscious mind. One might argue though that for a human to consciously define a pattern, for example a nucleotide, naturally involves conscious information processing. However, the existence of unicellular and multicellular organisms, with the complex biochemistry that leads, among other events, to the existence of enzymes and polynucleotides that interact maintaining
13152-539: The future years to come. Diderot The word encyclopedia ( encyclo | pedia ) comes from the Koine Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία , transliterated enkyklios paideia , meaning 'general education' from enkyklios ( ἐγκύκλιος ), meaning 'circular, recurrent, required regularly, general' and paideia ( παιδεία ), meaning 'education, rearing of a child'; together, the phrase literally translates as 'complete instruction' or 'complete knowledge'. However,
13289-402: The globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in
13426-944: The hospital , BrE to hospital ; contrast, however, AmE actress Elizabeth Taylor , BrE the actress Elizabeth Taylor ). Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable since the two varieties are constantly influencing each other, and American English is not a standardized set of dialects. Differences in orthography are also minor. The main differences are that American English usually uses spellings such as flavor for British flavour , fiber for fibre , defense for defence , analyze for analyse , license for licence , catalog for catalogue and traveling for travelling . Noah Webster popularized such spellings in America, but he did not invent most of them. Rather, "he chose already existing options on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology." Other differences are due to
13563-401: The idea of "information catalysts", structures where emerging information promotes the transition from pattern recognition to goal-directed action (for example, the specific transformation of a substrate into a product by an enzyme, or auditory reception of words and the production of an oral response) The Danish Dictionary of Information Terms argues that information only provides an answer to
13700-674: The influence of 18th-century Protestant Ulster Scots immigrants (known in the U.S. as the Scotch-Irish ) in Appalachia developing Appalachian English and the 20th-century Great Migration bringing African-American Vernacular English to the Great Lakes urban centers. Any phonologically unmarked North American accent falls under an umbrella known as General American. This section mostly refers to such General American features. Studies on historical usage of English in both
13837-895: The irrecoverability of any information about the matter to have originally crossed the event horizon , violating both classical and quantum assertions against the ability to destroy information. The information cycle (addressed as a whole or in its distinct components) is of great concern to information technology , information systems , as well as information science . These fields deal with those processes and techniques pertaining to information capture (through sensors ) and generation (through computation , formulation or composition), processing (including encoding, encryption, compression, packaging), transmission (including all telecommunication methods), presentation (including visualization / display methods), storage (such as magnetic or optical, including holographic methods ), etc. Information visualization (shortened as InfoVis) depends on
13974-403: The issue of signs with the context within which signs are used. The focus of pragmatics is on the intentions of living agents underlying communicative behaviour. In other words, pragmatics link language to action. Semantics is concerned with the meaning of a message conveyed in a communicative act. Semantics considers the content of communication. Semantics is the study of the meaning of signs –
14111-438: The late 18th century onwards, but which has conversely lost prestige in the U.S. since at least the early 20th century. Non-rhoticity makes a word like car sound like cah or source like sauce . New York City and Southern accents are the most prominent regional accents of the country, as well as the most stigmatized and socially disfavored. Southern speech, strongest in southern Appalachia and certain areas of Texas,
14248-451: The late 20th century, encyclopedias were being published on CD-ROMs for use with personal computers . This was the usual way computer users accessed encyclopedic knowledge from the 1980s and 1990s. Later, DVD discs replaced CD-ROMs, and by the mid-2000s, internet encyclopedias were dominant and replaced disc-based software encyclopedias. CD-ROM encyclopedias were usually a macOS or Microsoft Windows (3.0, 3.1 or 95/98) application on
14385-411: The limitations of Shannon-Weaver information when attempting to characterize and measure subjective information. Information is any type of pattern that influences the formation or transformation of other patterns. In this sense, there is no need for a conscious mind to perceive, much less appreciate, the pattern. Consider, for example, DNA . The sequence of nucleotides is a pattern that influences
14522-427: The mid-nineteenth century onwards, so they "are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago", while other accents, like of New York City and Boston, have remained stable in that same time-frame. However, a General American sound system also has some debated degree of influence nationwide, for example, gradually beginning to oust the regional accent in urban areas of the South and at least some in
14659-617: The most formal contexts, and regional accents with the most General American native features include North Midland, Western New England, and Western accents. Although no longer region-specific, African-American Vernacular English , which remains the native variety of most working- and middle-class African Americans , has a close relationship to Southern dialects and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans, including hip hop culture . Hispanic and Latino Americans have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied Latino Englishes are Chicano English , spoken in
14796-438: The multi-faceted concept of information in terms of signs and signal-sign systems. Signs themselves can be considered in terms of four inter-dependent levels, layers or branches of semiotics : pragmatics, semantics, syntax, and empirics. These four layers serve to connect the social world on the one hand with the physical or technical world on the other. Pragmatics is concerned with the purpose of communication. Pragmatics links
14933-436: The occurrence of a causal input at a later time (and perhaps another place). Some information is important because of association with other information but eventually there must be a connection to a causal input. In practice, information is usually carried by weak stimuli that must be detected by specialized sensory systems and amplified by energy inputs before they can be functional to the organism or system. For example, light
15070-594: The organization or to meet legal, fiscal or accountability requirements imposed on the organization. Willis expressed the view that sound management of business records and information delivered "...six key requirements for good corporate governance ...transparency; accountability; due process; compliance; meeting statutory and common law requirements; and security of personal and corporate information." Michael Buckland has classified "information" in terms of its uses: "information as process", "information as knowledge", and "information as thing". Beynon-Davies explains
15207-402: The past forms of a few verbs (for example, AmE/BrE: learned / learnt , burned / burnt , snuck/sneaked , dove/dived ) although the purportedly "British" forms can occasionally be seen in American English writing as well; different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (for example, AmE in school, BrE at school ); and whether or not a definite article is used, in very few cases (AmE to
15344-423: The probability of occurrence. Information theory takes advantage of this by concluding that more uncertain events require more information to resolve their uncertainty. The bit is a typical unit of information . It is 'that which reduces uncertainty by half'. Other units such as the nat may be used. For example, the information encoded in one "fair" coin flip is log 2 (2/1) = 1 bit, and in two fair coin flips
15481-426: The reader lacking in understanding the meaning, significance or limitations of a term , and how the term relates to a broader field of knowledge. To address those needs, an encyclopedia article is typically not limited to simple definitions, and is not limited to defining an individual word, but provides a more extensive meaning for a subject or discipline . In addition to defining and listing synonymous terms for
15618-487: The resolution of ambiguity or uncertainty that arises during the interpretation of patterns within the signal or message. Information may be structured as data . Redundant data can be compressed up to an optimal size, which is the theoretical limit of compression. The information available through a collection of data may be derived by analysis. For example, a restaurant collects data from every customer order. That information may be analyzed to produce knowledge that
15755-411: The resources by themselves, so multiple publishers would come together with their resources to create better encyclopedias. Later, rivalry grew, causing copyright to occur due to weak underdeveloped laws. John Harris is often credited with introducing the now-familiar alphabetic format in 1704 with his English Lexicon Technicum: Or, A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not only
15892-607: The scientist and statesman Shen Kuo (1031–1095) with his Dream Pool Essays of 1088; the statesman, inventor, and agronomist Wang Zhen (active 1290–1333) with his Nong Shu of 1313; and Song Yingxing (1587–1666) with his Tiangong Kaiwu . Song Yingxing was termed the " Diderot of China" by British historian Joseph Needham . Before the advent of the printing press, encyclopedic works were all hand-copied and thus rarely available, beyond wealthy patrons or monastic men of learning: they were expensive, and usually written for those extending knowledge rather than those using it. During
16029-471: The specific context associated with this interpretation may cause the transformation of the information into knowledge . Complex definitions of both "information" and "knowledge" make such semantic and logical analysis difficult, but the condition of "transformation" is an important point in the study of information as it relates to knowledge, especially in the business discipline of knowledge management . In this practice, tools and processes are used to assist
16166-418: The study of the form rather than the content of signs and sign systems. Nielsen (2008) discusses the relationship between semiotics and information in relation to dictionaries. He introduces the concept of lexicographic information costs and refers to the effort a user of a dictionary must make to first find, and then understand data so that they can generate information. Communication normally exists within
16303-446: The subject named in the article's title; this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words , such as their etymology , meaning, pronunciation , use, and grammatical forms. Encyclopedias have existed for around 2,000 years and have evolved considerably during that time as regards language (written in a major international or a vernacular language), size (few or many volumes), intent (presentation of
16440-669: The success of the Voyager missions to deep space, the invention of the compact disc , the feasibility of mobile phones and the development of the Internet. The theory has also found applications in other areas, including statistical inference , cryptography , neurobiology , perception , linguistics, the evolution and function of molecular codes ( bioinformatics ), thermal physics , quantum computing , black holes , information retrieval , intelligence gathering , plagiarism detection , pattern recognition , anomaly detection and even art creation. Often information can be viewed as
16577-434: The system can be called information. In other words, it can be said that information in this sense is something potentially perceived as representation, though not created or presented for that purpose. For example, Gregory Bateson defines "information" as a "difference that makes a difference". If, however, the premise of "influence" implies that information has been perceived by a conscious mind and also interpreted by it,
16714-527: The things for which those words stand. Thus, while dictionary entries are inextricably fixed to the word described, encyclopedia articles can be given a different entry name. As such, dictionary entries are not fully translatable into other languages, but encyclopedia articles can be. In practice, however, the distinction is not concrete, as there is no clear-cut difference between factual, "encyclopedic" information and linguistic information such as appear in dictionaries. Thus encyclopedias may contain material that
16851-472: The topic, the article can treat the topic's more extensive meaning in more depth and convey the most relevant accumulated knowledge on that subject. An encyclopedia article also often includes many maps and illustrations , as well as bibliography and statistics . An encyclopedia is, theoretically, not written to convince, although one of its goals is indeed to convince its reader of its veracity. In addition, sometimes books or reading lists are compiled from
16988-570: The traditional standard accent of (southern) England, Received Pronunciation (RP), has evolved a trap–bath split . Moreover, American accents preserve /h/ at the start of syllables, while perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England participate in /h/ dropping , particularly in informal contexts. However, General American is also innovative in a number of its own ways: The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from
17125-416: The transaction of business". The International Committee on Archives (ICA) Committee on electronic records defined a record as, "recorded information produced or received in the initiation, conduct or completion of an institutional or individual activity and that comprises content, context and structure sufficient to provide evidence of the activity". Records may be maintained to retain corporate memory of
17262-518: The two separate words were reduced to a single word due to a scribal error by copyists of a Latin manuscript edition of Quintillian in 1470. The copyists took this phrase to be a single Greek word, enkyklopaedia , with the same meaning, and this spurious Greek word became the Neo-Latin word encyclopaedia , which in turn came into English. Because of this compounded word, fifteenth-century readers since have often, and incorrectly, thought that
17399-462: The use of proper nouns in common communication, and the words derived from such proper nouns. There are some broad differences between encyclopedias and dictionaries. Most noticeably, encyclopedia articles are longer, fuller and more thorough than entries in most general-purpose dictionaries. There are differences in content as well. Generally speaking, dictionaries provide linguistic information about words themselves, while encyclopedias focus more on
17536-417: The verb-and-preposition combination: stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout , holdup, hideout, comeback, makeover , and many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin ( win out, hold up, back up/off/down/out, face up to and many others). Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive in
17673-775: The word corn , used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the U.S. Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812 , with the opening of the West, like ranch (now a common house style ). Due to Mexican culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro (instead of coriander), queso, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words usually lack an English equivalent and are found in popular restaurants. New forms of dwelling created new terms ( lot , waterfront) and types of homes like log cabin , adobe in
17810-525: The world around him. This work became very popular in Antiquity , was one of the first classical manuscripts to be printed in 1470, and has remained popular ever since as a source of information on the Roman world, and especially Roman art , Roman technology and Roman engineering . The Spanish scholar Isidore of Seville was the first Christian writer to try to compile a summa of universal knowledge,
17947-834: The world's largest encyclopedia in 2004 at the 300,000 article stage. By late 2005, Misplaced Pages had produced over two million articles in more than 80 languages with content licensed under the copyleft GNU Free Documentation License . As of August 2009, Misplaced Pages had over 3 million articles in English and well over 10 million combined articles in over 250 languages. Today, Misplaced Pages has 6,916,935 articles in English, over 60 million combined articles in over 300 languages, and over 250 million combined pages including project and discussion pages. Since 2002, other 💕s appeared, including Hudong (2005–) and Baidu Baike (2006–) in Chinese, and Google's Knol (2008–2012) in English. Some MediaWiki-based encyclopedias have appeared, usually under
18084-609: The world. Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American ; it covers a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. but especially associated with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of there being one single mainstream American accent . The sound of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having emerged in
18221-422: Was a complete encyclopedia explaining the seven liberal arts . Financial, commercial, legal, and intellectual factors changed the size of encyclopedias. Middle classes had more time to read and encyclopedias helped them to learn more. Publishers wanted to increase their output so some countries like Germany started selling books missing alphabetical sections, to publish faster. Also, publishers could not afford all
18358-497: Was first published between 1768 and 1771 in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh , in three volumes. The encyclopaedia grew in size; the second edition was 10 volumes, and by its fourth edition (1801–1810), it had expanded to 20 volumes. 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
18495-584: Was the Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum of Cassiodorus (543–560) dedicated to the Christian divinity and the seven liberal arts. The encyclopedia of Suda , a massive 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, had 30,000 entries, many drawings from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers. The text was arranged alphabetically with some slight deviations from common vowel order and placed in
18632-443: Was the informational equivalent of 174 newspapers per person per day in 2007. The world's combined effective capacity to exchange information through two-way telecommunication networks was the informational equivalent of 6 newspapers per person per day in 2007. As of 2007, an estimated 90% of all new information is digital, mostly stored on hard drives. The total amount of data created, captured, copied, and consumed globally
18769-469: Was written by Noah Webster in 1828, codifying several of these spellings. Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and do not normally affect mutual intelligibility; these include: typically a lack of differentiation between adjectives and adverbs, employing the equivalent adjectives as adverbs he ran quick / he ran quickly ; different use of some auxiliary verbs ; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns ; different preferences for
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