From cell phone GPS to automated car directions, technology has been a great boon to travelers who are navigating unfamiliar territory. However, these features aren't always reliable, and you occasionally may have to pull out the map. On those occasions, it's helpful to be familiar with the features and symbols of maps.
Colors often have standard meanings. Black typically indicates man-made features, both real and informational. This means that the outline of physical buildings and the boundaries of conceptual borders, such as county lines, are in black.
Red typically indicates important roads and public land boundaries, while a red tint points out the boundaries of urban areas. Contour and geographic features are shown in brown, while more transient natural elements, such as forests and fields, are indicated by green.
Maps indicate a scale and a method by which distances can be measured. Scales usually appear as a ruler bar or a written notation. A common map scale is 1 to 100,000, however, this is often not useful to the reader. Using a ruler to indicate scale, such as indicating that 1 inch equals 25 miles, allows you to accurately measure roads and borders.
A compass rose can be as complex as a 360-degree symbol pointing out North, South, West and East, along with everything in between. Or it can be a single arrow pointing North, the standard cardinal direction on Western maps.
If you have a compass, you can orient a map, allowing you to relate it directly to your surroundings. Simply lay a compass on the map surface, then turn the map underneath until the compass rose is aligned with the directional needle on the compass.
Particularly confusing for those who are unfamiliar with maps can be the complex symbols used to describe roads and highways. Two black lines running in parallel indicates a divided highway. Highways are typically labeled as either state or federal, with the federal highway number inside a seal and state highway numbers inside a circle. A primitive road will be marked with a dashed line, while paved roads are typically solid black bands.
Unlike the title of a novel or short story, the title of a map is not fanciful or arbitrary. Instead, it is designed to relay specific information. Titles typically indicate the region mapped, the region's identity, how the map relates to other maps and when the map was made to indicate the relevance of the data.
