The articles of the Macropædia are generally written by named contributors and have references, in contrast to the roughly 65,000 articles of the Micropædia that have no named contributor and no references. However, some parts of the Macropædia were written by the editorial staff of the Britannica; such editorial articles are identified by the initials "Ed."
Macropædia articles are typically authored by individual contributors and include references, while Micropædia articles lack these features. Some sections of Macropædia were written by the Britannica editorial team; these articles are marked with "Ed."