Maps. All Esential Features << Learners Hobby

MAPS ESSENTIAL FEATURES
    Five essential features of a map are
(i) Title
(ii) Boundary
(iii) Directions
(iv) Key
(v) Scale 

TITLE
    Title of a map is its heading and suggests the main theme. A map may be physical, political or thematic. The title sums up the nature of the map. For e.g. Title of map below is Map Essentials.
BOUNDARY  
    Boundary of the map represent territory of a place and and/or separation of landmarks from the sea. It is often shown in black curved line. The thickness of a boundary line may vary according to the theme. The map below shows the boundary of India with respect to its neighbours, seas and ocean.
DIRECTIONS
    Directions help us to locate and object/place on the map accurately . On a map, North is towards the top, South is to the bottom, to the left is West and East is on the right side. These four directions are also called Cardinal Directions. Most maps have an arrow pointing to the top with letter 'N' written above. There are also four intermediate directions. They are North-East, South-East, South-West and North-West.
KEY
    Key or legend of the map gives a list of conventional symbols, colours and other similar features. These symbols are called 'Conventional' because they have been adopted by mutual consent and convention between different countries. Some of the standard conventional symbols of the Survery of India are shown in the table below. The important advantage of these conventional symbols is that they make map more meaningful and less crowded with a lot of information and map.
SCALE
    Scale of the map is the ratio of distance on the map to actual distance on ground.
    Standard maps are always drawn to scale. A 'scale' is the relationship between a distance on the map and the corresponding distance on the ground. For example, 1km on the ground may be represented by 1 ground. Map scales can be shown in different ways-
(i) Statements of Scale,
(ii) Representative Fraction,
(iii) Linear Bar/Graphic Scale.
    At the bottom of the map, the scale is always mentioned for example, scale 1:5000. The statement of scale is the most popular and commonly used method of reading distances on maps. There is a major difference between small scale and large scale maps. 1cm on a small-scale map represents 100km on the ground. 1 cm on a large-scale map represents 100m on the ground. When continents and countries are to be shown, we ise a small-scale map. For a small area like a village, we use a large-scale map.