With the assistance of his foreman Louis-Claude Brullé, le Breton would occasionally censor articles in order to make them less radical, frequently drawing the ire of Diderot.

For example, le Breton did not included a portion of Diderot's article "Menance" that indirectly attacked Joly de Fleury, the French police commissioner.

[1] According to Friedrich Melchior Grimm, writing in 1777, "The entire extent of the injury done by this unexampled, murderous, and infamous depredation will never be known, since the perpetrators of the crime burned the manuscript as soon as it was printed and left the evil without remedy."

In addition, le Breton excluded three of Diderot's articles titled, "Sectes du Christianisme" and "Tolérance" as well as the subarticle "Théologie Scholastique".

[3] In the latter case, le Breton edited Diderot's original article to be less favorable towards Pierre Bayle, a 17th-century philosopher whose views were deemed unacceptable.