Map Layout and Composition Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Each element earns its place by doing a job the reader needs. A cartogram has no meaningful scale, a sheet with a labelled graticule needs no arrow, and a map with no symbols to explain needs no legend, so the list is a starting point rather than a rule.

Answer: D

Areas, distances and directions are each preserved by some projections and distorted by others, so a reader measuring anything needs to know which. On a large-scale sheet the differences are small enough to matter much less.

Answer: A

Correct answer: 1 and 2 only

Statements 1 and 2 are correct: the optical centre does sit slightly above the geometric centre, which is why an element centred by measurement looks a little low, and balance is indeed about the distribution of visual weight. Statement 3 is wrong - symmetry is one route to balance and often a dull one, since an asymmetric arrangement in which the weights are correctly counterpoised is balanced and usually more interesting.

Answer: B

Correct answer: fewer elements and heavier lettering

A projected map is read at a distance, briefly, and often in poor conditions, so it must carry far less than a printed sheet the reader can study at arm’s length. Lettering has to be heavier and larger, classes fewer, and detail stripped back to what supports the point being made. Reusing the print design unchanged is the commonest cause of an unreadable slide.

Answer: C

Correct answer: True

The credits identify the source of the data, not the author of the map, and those are different things: a cartographer who compiled the sheet personally still worked from someone’s survey, imagery or census. Naming the source lets the reader judge the currency and reliability of what they are looking at, and it discharges the licensing obligations that come with most datasets.

Answer: D

The arrow's task is to state orientation once, quietly. An ornate rose competes with the map for notice and inverts the hierarchy of the sheet, whatever its merits as decoration on a historical map where ornament was part of the point.

Answer: A

Declination changes with place and drifts with time, so the sheet states both the value and the date it applied. Grid convergence is the separate angle between grid north and true north, and a sheet showing all three norths prints a small diagram of the relationship.

Answer: B

All three differ almost everywhere. Grid north departs from true north because a flat grid cannot follow converging meridians, and magnetic north wanders with the Earth's field, which is why sheets print a diagram of all three.

Answer: C

Six minutes a year over ten years is 60 minutes, or one degree, and the declination is decreasing, so 2 degrees becomes 1 degree west. Applying the annual change is why the date of the figure is always printed with it.

Answer: D

Correct answer: one part is subdivided finely for close reading

The standard scale bar has a primary section marked in round units and one section - usually the leftmost - divided more finely, so a distance can be read to a fraction of a unit by laying it against the fine divisions. The rest of the bar covers the coarse measurement. Neither the sheet width nor the legend classes has anything to do with how it is divided.