Map Layout and Composition Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Shared alignment tells the eye that the items belong to one group and lets it move between them without resetting. Scattered placement makes the same elements read as unrelated fragments, and the sheet then looks assembled rather than designed.

Answer: D

A ranked sequence should run from low to high and a qualitative list should group related categories, because the reader takes the arrangement as part of the message. A random order forces a search where none should be needed.

Answer: A

Any enlargement or reduction alters every printed distance, and the drawn bar changes with them while a printed ratio does not. Ease of reading is a genuine second advantage but not the decisive one, since a ratio can be worked out with a moment's arithmetic.

Answer: B

The graticule is the network of meridians and parallels, curved on most projections, while a grid is a set of straight lines at equal intervals in a projected coordinate system. A sheet may carry both, labelled separately.

Answer: C

Three figures for each axis divide the one-kilometre square into tenths, giving a hundred-metre square. Adding a further pair of digits to make eight figures narrows it to ten metres, and each extra pair divides the square by ten again.

Answer: D

Twenty squares along each side gives 20 multiplied by 20, which is 400. Counting along both axes rather than adding them is the step that catches people out, since 20 plus 20 gives the tempting but quite wrong answer of 40.

Answer: A

Fifteen sheets fit along the longer side and ten along the shorter, giving 150 in total. Real series need rather more than this, because sheets overlap at their edges rather than abutting exactly, and the series boundary rarely follows the country outline.

Answer: B

Both are true and the reason gives the purpose: the overlap lets a road or river be traced across the join without laying the two sheets exactly edge to edge, and it also absorbs the small errors that trimming inevitably introduces.

Answer: C

Correct answer: which sheets adjoin the present one

On a sheet of a map series the index diagram is a small grid showing the present sheet in relation to its neighbours, so a reader can identify and order the adjoining sheets. It answers a question no amount of detail on the map face can - what comes next - and it belongs to series mapping specifically, which is what separates it from a locator inset.

Answer: D

Trimming away irrelevant surroundings leaves more room for the region that matters and strengthens the separation between subject and background. The saving is one of the reader's attention rather than of printing cost, which barely changes.