(Perhaps Britannica gets it because "Encyclopedia" is a common word - we'd feel silly with the sentence "I looked it up in Encyclopedia Britannica", because "I looked it up in encyclopedia" would itself be wrong)

On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk>wrote;wrote: I don't have a problem with the sentence "I looked it up in Encyclopedia Britannica".  In fact, after consideration, I'd say adding in "the" would be technically incorrect.  Looking at britannica.com, EB consistently refers to itself without "the" in the beginning.

Now look at www.cia.gov.  Seems to be no rhyme or reason to the use or nonuse of "the" when the CIA refers to themselves.  "About CIA", "History of the CIA", "Offices of CIA", "Contact CIA".  "To accomplish its mission, the CIA engages in research, development, and deployment of high-leverage technology for intelligence purposes. As a separate agency, CIA serves as an independent source of analysis..."  They must have used Intellipedia to create that paragraph.

Ziko van Dijk wrote: Actually, singular proper nouns commonly do not take the definite article in English. I would not say "the Britannica" anymore than I would say "the Wikipedia" (or, as noted, "the Encarta"). This particular case may indicate a difference between British and American English here, I'm guessing from the other comments. There are some situations where you would use the definite article for singular proper nouns, such as with some geographical names, or when the name is actually a combination of common and proper nouns. Thus, I might refer to "the Encyclopedia Britannica" because it's "the encyclopedia" and "Britannica" identifies which encyclopedia I mean.

When I look into Duden Die Grammatik, this authoritative reference work about German grammar says that proper names (Angela, Berlin, Christmas) don't get an article: "Hamburg liegt an der Elbe." But it mentions many exceptions, like for rivers who actually do get an article (such as "die Elbe"). An article you use also for institutions ("die UNO") and works ("der Wallenstein", "das Ave Verum"). So what is "Wikipedia", an institution, a work, a proper name? In German texts I find a lot of inconsequences, sometimes in one sentence there is "die Wikipedia" an then again "Wikipedia". I believed that that has to do with the context: "I am registered at Wikipedia" (institution), and "I have written something in the Wikipedia" (work). But this does not fit with my actual findings. Then I thought that "Wikipedia" without article is an anglicism, but it seems not to be that easy, too. What else do we compare (the) Wikipedia with, except for other encyclopedias? A web site like Google? A social movement like Greenpeace? And how about "Wikimedia"? In a short corpus I studied the reporter said "Wikimedia e.V." in German, although I say "die Wikimedia". In English, is it "the Wikimedia"? "The Foundation"? "The Wikimedia Foundation"? Kind regards, your confused Ziko 2009/6/27 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>: -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

There are some situations where you would use the definite article for singular proper nouns, such as with some geographical names, or when the name is actually a combination of common and proper nouns.

ps - I am confused by the first sentence on wikimedia.org [what does 'Wikimedia' mean there?], and the footer of wikimediafoundation says "About Wikimedia Foundation" -- missing an article.

2009/6/28 Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>om>: As far as I'm concerned "Wikimedia" doesn't exist as a proper noun. It's just an adjective: "the Wikimedia Foundation", "the Wikimedia movement", "the Wikimedia projects", "the Wikimedia community" etc.

Wikipedia does not take an article, nor does Wikimedia. When combined with an adjective modifying the project name, or a common noun modified by the name, the compound noun does take an article. "Wikimedia is a non-profit charitable corporation." is correct; so are "The English Wikipedia", "the Wikipedia cabal", "the print Wikipedia 'Wikipedia:' namespace pages", and "the Wikimedia Foundation".

Once a name or monument transcends what it originally named and is used by reference to describe similar things elsewhere, there is a tendency to add the definite article -- the Earth, the Sun, the Sphinx, the Oracle, the Colosseum.  I do see people running wikis of any sort on their own or their company site, with a comment that they have 'set up their own wikipedia'.  This would be consistent with calling the original Project 'the' Wikipedia.