Author(s): David Crystal

Reference

Edited by David Crystal, the UK's most widely respected reference editor, this second edition of The Penguin Encyclopedia is the most authoritative and topical one-volume encyclopedia available.

New entries in this edition include:

Hans Blix and Jay Garner, Ricky Gervais and Ozzie Osbourne, David Blaine and Jonny Wilkinson, David Kelly and John Kerry. New topics include the Iraq War, the US road map, SARS, the Freedom Building, and weapons of mass destruction. The Penguin Encyclopedia provides a succinct, systematic and readable guide to the facts, events, issues, beliefs and achievements which make up the sum of human knowledge. Its aim is to act as a standard reference work for use in the home, school, library or office by both adult enquirers and young people of high-school age.

Its content derives from a database of information which has been compiled since the mid 1980s, and which has provided the input to other famous reference projects of the past, notably the Cambridge family of encyclopedias and the Chambers factfinders. However, it differs significantly from these works in range, relevance, and presentation. The present book is the largest single-volume encyclopedia it has been my privilege to edit, comprising nearly 2 million words, and representing a much wider range of current topics, issues, locations and personalities than it has been possible to include in earlier publications of this type. The relevant statistics can be briefly summarized. The encyclopedia contains over 27,000 alphabetically organized entries, including a further 4,000 boldface items treated within those entries, all appropriately cross-referenced to anticipate the diverse routes which readers use when they are searching for information. The majority of these entries (nearly 17,000) are general topics. In addition, there are over 7,000 biographical entries, concentrating on persons of international distinction, though not neglecting national personalities within the English-speaking countries that this encyclopedia primarily serves. Some 4,000 gazetteer entries complete the book's alphabetical coverage.

The entries were originally written by a team of over 350 specialist contributors affiliated to universities, museums, and other centers of excellence, and have been regularly revised in an ongoing three-year cycle to ensure a high level of up-to-dateness for the new millennium. The source database is actually updated day-by-day for current affairs, and this, along with a publishing procedure which allows new material to be added right up to just a couple of months before publication, ensures that the present edition of this book, appearing in the second half of 2004, contains information from the first half of that year. Inevitably, events from 2003 loom large, such as SARS and the Iraq war, as well as personalities who have achieved fresh public prominence, such as Ricky Gervais, Jonny Wilkinson, John Kerry, and Hans Blix. Internationalism is a major focus of The Penguin Encyclopedia.

There is of course significant coverage of such traditionally popular areas as flora and fauna, history, art, music, literature, theatre, religion, and mythology. But an encyclopedia for the 2000s has to reflect international issues, especially in politics, economics, technology and current affairs. A further focus is on for want of a better word "intelligent" issues. If I had to identify a single point of difference between this encyclopedia and others, I would single out the many entries in The Penguin Encyclopedia devoted to an explanation of important concepts which have shaped the history of ideas in such fields as philosophy, economics, religion, art, linguistics, literature, sociology and politics. Several complex intellectual topics are given a serious yet succinct treatment. Probably the most notable characteristic of the entry treatment in The Penguin Encyclopedia relates to its functions as a standard reference work. It aims to five rapid answers to specific queries about people, places or topics. The majority of entries are short and to the point: just over half the entries average 125 words, and a further 45 per cent average 50 words; the remaining 5 per cent average 500 words. These longer entries provide a detailed exposition of themes of particular historical contemporary importance?for example, the American Revolution, civil rights, the two World Wars and entries on the nations of the world. The other important feature of The Penguin Encyclopedia and one which helps to explain the size of the work as a whole is its concern to present information in an accessible and interesting way. I have paid particular attention to the language of the entries to ensure that they are written in an intelligible style, without losing sight of the stylistic conventions identifying the subject area to which each entry belongs. A particular innovation is the systematic use of a specially condensed style for gazetteer, natural history, and certain other types of entry, which provides information in a clear and direct manner, increases accessibility, and saves a great deal of space (thus permitting an overall increase in coverage). The principle of functional clarity has also been used in the selection of illustrations, where I have avoided the "pretty picture" approach to encyclopedia compilation, and chosen to rely on a small set of clear, relevant line-drawings. This is very much a text-based encyclopedia, focusing on description and explanation. People need to be able to talk about what they know, and it is text, rather than pictures, which is the only sure means of enabling them to do this. That is also why I give so much guidance on pronunciation, where this is not obvious, using a specially devised phonetic spelling. The Penguin Encyclopedia, accordingly, presents a knowledge base which is well suited to meeting the information needs of people as we enter the new millennium. At the same time, it is important to recognize not only the strengths, but also the limitations of any general encyclopedia, and to strive to surmount them. Many readers will be more knowledgeable about certain topics than any encyclopedia team could ever be. I therefore very much welcome feedback from readers relating to any inadequacy in our coverage and treatment. The easiest way to do this is to e-mail the database at www.crystalreference.com or through conventional mail at Penguin Press Editorial 1, Penguin Books, 80 Strand, London, WC2R OR1. In this way, our knowledge base will grow with the times, and reflect ever more closely the interests and concerns of those wishing to benefit from it.