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Compass direction
Compass and Direction
There are four cardinal points on a compass – North, South, East, and West. When reading a compass, and telling other people directions, you need to wipe “right” and “left” out of your vocabulary. Right and Left are relative directions and differ depending on your location and direction, but the cardinal points are constant.
It might make it easier to remember if you think: Never (North) Eat (East) Shredded (South) Wheat (West)
It might make it easier to remember if you think: Never (North) Eat (East) Shredded (South) Wheat (West)
The direction halfway between North and East is an inter-cardinal point and is called North East. The other three inter-cardinal points are South East, South West, and North West.
Finally, there are secondary inter-cardinal points halfway between each cardinal point and inter-cardinal point. These are North-North East, East-North East, East-South East, South-South East, and so on. With these directions, you can give someone a fairly good idea of what direction they need to go. We could add additional points, continuing to break each section in half over and over, but telling someone to go East-East East North East-East North East would not be fun.Since there is a need for more precise directions, the circle of a compass face is split into 360 marks called degrees. For rough directions, go ahead and use North or North West.
