20 Things to Keep in Mind When Reading a Map

Maps are made with a purpose in mind. Consider why the map you are looking at was made. Was your map made to convince you of something? To help you navigate? To decorate a presentation or space?

In order to be useful, a map must distort reality in some way, omitting some information to highlight the information which is most important. Maps are not objective representations of space, but reflect the biases and priorities of their creators.

Map users are often too trusting of maps, assuming they are made by unbiased, professional and skilled people with no interest in deceiving them. Maps are just as prone to accidental and intentional errors as books, speeches and other forms of communication.

We live on a spherical planet with a curved surface. Because Earth’s surface is curved, it is difficult to represent on a 2D surface such as a map because distances will be stretched and shrunken. This is not a big problem when representing a smaller land area, such as a city, but it is a serious problem when trying to map large areas such as continents, or the entire Earth itself.

Except in very rare cases, maps are usually much smaller than the things they represent. Thus, cartographers must scale down the spaces they depict. Check to see if the map you are looking at lists its scale, and consider whether it uses this scale consistently. Some digital maps allow you to zoom in and out, changing the scale.

Maps use symbols to represent certain features or to convey specific information. Codes and legends can help to explain these symbols. Symbols can be misleading. Symbols and mapping conventions vary by culture, a symbol might intuitively represent one thing in one culture, and a different thing in another.

Consider why and how the creator of your map uses colour. By using certain colours, cartographers can intentionally or accidentally send specific messages about what’s depicted on the map.

While colour can help make maps more clear and visually appealing, colour-coded mapping can also confuse those with colour blindness, and a poor use of colour can create maps which are visually unappealing or messy.

Large scale maps must usually omit finer details in order to avoid overcrowding. Sometimes boundaries and territory shapes are edited, simplified, smoothed or blended together for the sake of simplicity and clarity.

Advertisers are less interested in accuracy than they are in presenting their product well. Always be cautious when maps are trying to sell you something. A transportation company that operates a toll highway may push points together, remove some features or geographical realities or shrink or stretch the land in order to make their route look easier and more efficient than their competitors.

Maps hold political power. By putting a territory on a map with distinct borders and features, one can give a region, and any ruler it has, political legitimacy and a sense of importance. Governments, corporations and individuals can make their causes seem more legitimate merely by putting their desired information on an official-looking map. Political propagandists can use maps in many ways to push many ideologies.

Cartographers can use sizing to make territories look larger or smaller, to make them seem more relevant, more threatening, more powerful or vice versa. They may also alter a country’s borders to include disputed territory.

Cartographers can make one culture seem dominant over others by translating place names or using one culture’s preferred names for places while excluding the names used by other cultures.

Governments may leak or circulate maps with false details to confuse enemies or outsiders, and may even provide these maps to their own public, positioning them as official and reliable. Government-made maps will often hide or exclude military bases, weapons-facilities, environmental hazards and other features which might appeal unappealing or politically inflammatory, even if the existence/location of the feature is common knowledge in a particular area. Government maps are not value-neutral, and contain ideology and political significance.

Cartographers are often part of committees or regulated by governments, and these groups set standards for map production. These standards are culturally specific, and shaped by the interests of the country, region, culture and institution producing them. In many places, economic and military interests are prioritized, so features that may be relevant to these areas are prioritized.

Misspelled words, streets which were planned but never created and incorrectly drawn boundaries are common map errors. Sometimes maps have errors on them because the cartographer cut corners or did not have the money or resources to do a good job. Other times, maps errors are made intentionally to mislead the reader.

Maps can be faulty simply because they are out of date, or were compiled from maps made at various points in time. Some maps, like weather maps, need to be updated daily. Derivative maps, maps created by using other maps, are more likely to contain errors than maps produced using other techniques, as not only are errors made in transferring information, but new maps will also contain any errors made in the originals used to compile new maps.

The same data set can be used to produce many different maps, telling many different stories. Areal aggregation, how land is divided into distinct areas, can impact what trends are seen on a map, and can be used to manipulate data to show a specific trend. A cartographer may want to show a specific trend, and might pick and choose data to emphasize their point.

As maps are increasingly easier to produce on the computer, and can now be used as part of multimedia presentations, complete with images, sound and time lapses, one must be ever skeptical, especially if the presenter is attempting to sell an ideology, project or item.

Maps are not always made and used simply to convey information, but also to decorate, impress or lend legitimacy to something. This is not always bad. Maps can be correct and useful and still serve this purpose. However, decorative maps may be made incorrectly, may be misleading or may sacrifice accuracy for flashiness.