The names of the compass point directions follow these rules:
8-wind compass rose • The four
cardinal directions are north (N), east (E), south (S), west (W), at 90° angles on the compass rose. • The four intercardinal (or ordinal) directions are formed by bisecting the above, giving: northeast (NE), southeast (SE), southwest (SW), and northwest (NW). In English and many other tongues, these are
compound words. Different
style guides for the four mandate spaces, dashes, or none. • In Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Ido, Italian, Japanese (usually), Macedonian, Norwegian (both Bokmal and Nynorsk), Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansch, Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, and Welsh the part meaning north or south precedes the part meaning east or west. • In Chinese, Vietnamese, Gaelic, and less commonly Japanese, the part meaning east or west precedes the other. • In Estonian, Finnish, Breton, the "Italianate system" (see section "Traditional Mediterranean compass points" below), and many South Asian and Southeast Asian languages such as Telugu, the intercardinals have distinct words. • in NE quadrant: north by east (NbE), northeast by north (NEbN), northeast by east (NEbE), and east by north (EbN); • in SE quadrant: east by south (EbS), southeast by east (SEbE), southeast by south (SEbS), and south by east (SbE); • in SW quadrant: south by west (SbW), southwest by south (SWbS), southwest by west (SWbW), and west by south (WbS); • in NW quadrant: west by north (WbN), northwest by west (NWbW), northwest by north (NWbN), and north by west (NbW) • All of the points in the 16-wind compass rose plus the sixteen quarter-winds together form the
32-wind compass rose. • If breaking down for study/signalling the subcomponents are called the "principal" followed by the "cardinal" wind/direction. As a
mnemonic (memory device), minds familiar encode the meaning of "X by Y" as "one small measure
from X
towards Y". It can be noted such measure ('one point') is °. So, for example, "northeast by east" means "one quarter of the gap from NE towards E". In summary, the 32-wind compass rose comes from the eight principal winds, eight half-winds, and sixteen quarter-winds combined, with each compass point at an ° angle from the next.
Half- and quarter-points By the middle of the 18th century, the 32-point system had been further extended by using half- and quarter-points to give a total of 128 directions. These fractional points are named by appending, for example, east, east, or east to the name of one of the 32 points. Each of the 96 fractional points can be named in two ways, depending on which of the two adjoining whole points is used, for example, NE is equivalent to NbEN. Either form is easily understood, but alternative conventions as to correct usage developed in different countries and organisations. "It is the custom in the United States Navy to box
from north and south
toward east and west, with the exception that divisions adjacent to a cardinal or inter-cardinal point are always referred to that point." The Royal Navy used the additional "rule that quarter points were never read from a point beginning and ending with the same letter". Compass roses very rarely named the fractional points and only showed small, unlabelled markers as a guide for helmsmen.
Maritime Use Prior to the modern
three-figure method of describing directions (using the 360° of a circle), the 32-point compass was used for directions on most ships, especially among European crews. The smallest unit of measure recognized was 'one point', 1/32 of a circle, or °. In the mariner's exercise of "boxing the compass", all thirty-two points of the
compass are named in
clockwise order. This exercise became more significant as navigation improved and the half- and quarter-point system increased the number of directions to include in the 'boxing'. Points remained the standard unit until switching to the three-figure degree method. These points were also used for relative measurement, so that an obstacle might be noted as 'two points off the starboard bow', meaning two points clockwise of straight ahead, ° This relative measurement may still be used in shorthand on modern ships, especially for handoffs between outgoing and incoming helmsmen, as the loss of granularity is less significant than the brevity and simplicity of the summary.
128 compass directions The table below shows how each of the 128 directions are named. The first two columns give the number of points and degrees clockwise from north. The third gives the equivalent bearing to the nearest degree from north or south towards east or west. The "CW" column gives the fractional-point bearings increasing in the
clockwise direction and "CCW"
counterclockwise. The final three columns show three common naming conventions: No "by" avoids the use of "by" with fractional points, U.S. Navy increases counterclockwise from a cardinal directly to the previous direction and clockwise elsewhere, and Royal Navy is the same but also uses counterclockwise from S to SbE to SSE and N to NbW to NNW. Colour coding shows whether each of the three naming systems matches the "CW" or "CCW" column. == Traditional Mediterranean compass points ==