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Concept
Points of the compass
Summary
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each separated by 90 degrees, and secondarily divided by four ordinal (intercardinal) directions—northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest—each located halfway between two cardinal directions. Some disciplines such as meteorology and navigation further divide the compass with additional azimuths. Within European tradition, a fully defined compass has 32 'points' (and any finer subdivisions are described in fractions of points).
Compass points are valuable in that they allow a user to refer to a specific azimuth in a colloquial fashion, without having to compute or remember degrees.
The names of the compass point directions follow these rules:
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, 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, the "Italianate system", and Telugu, the intercardinals have distinct words.
The eight principal winds (or main winds) are the set union of the cardinals and intercardinals. Taken in turn, each is 45° from the next. These form the 8-wind compass rose, the rose at its usual basic level today.
Official source
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