Places of interest can include locations (cities and towns), services (airports, banks and restaurants) and even attractions (state parks, museums and recreational areas). To denote cities, the most common symbol is a simple dot placed next to the name of the location. However, more ornate dots, usually with a circle or star around them, typically indicate capital cities. Service locations are most commonly marked with pictures that represent the particular service. For example, airports are denoted by an airplane; banks a dollar sign or an ATM; while restaurants commonly are indicated with a knife and fork symbol -- all common symbols that allow atlas users to pinpoint what they're looking for without confusion. Parks and conservation areas are usually marked with what are called "area symbols," colored areas that demonstrate the size and location of the park.
Transportation routes are an important facet of cartography and are typically the reason an atlas is in use in the first place. Though the intent of many cartographers is to show regions and areas in scale (in a proportional relation to surroundings), many routes are exaggerated or generalized so that they can be distinguished. For example, a feature on the Dorset Coast Digital Archive website describes a 1/50-inch line on a map at a 1:100,000 scale equal to a road that is 167 feet wide. This exaggeration makes transportation routes easy to identify and, when paired with road symbols that denote the type of road represented, easy to navigate. Color-coded dashes or hash marks with thin or thick lines next to them are the most common symbols used to determine the nature of the road (two-lane, interstate, toll or scenic) and road sign symbols along the drawn routes show the name and identifying numbers of the route.
Symbols used to demonstrate boundaries are often featured on atlas maps. Political boundaries, the imaginary lines that separate towns, cities, states, counties and countries, are typically marked with broken lines that display a certain number of dots between the dashes. For instance, state boundaries typically have two large black dots between each dash, while municipal boundaries only have one dot. International political boundaries usually feature two large dots over a white or tan background between dashes. Geographical boundaries, like forests, rivers and mountain ranges, are typically symbolized by area symbols color-coded to a particular type of terrain. Rivers are most commonly indicated by wide blue lines, while heavy forested areas are symbolized by large green or brown area symbols.
