in land measurements in the terrain that was being mapped. Terminology Representation of scale Map scales may be expressed in words (a lexical scale), as a ratio, or as a fraction. Examples are: 'one centimetre to one hundred metres' or 1:10,000 or 1/10,000 'one inch to one mile' or 1:63,360 or 1/63,360 'one centimetre to one thousand kilometres' or 1:100,000,000 or 1/100,000,000. (The ratio would usually be abbreviated to 1:100M) Bar scale vs. lexical scale In addition to the above many maps carry one or more (graphical) bar scales. For example, some modern British maps have three bar scales, one each for kilometres, miles and nautical miles. A lexical scale in a language known to the user may be easier to visualise than a ratio: if the scale is an inch to two miles and the map user can see two villages that are about two inches apart on the map, then it is easy to work out that the villages are about four miles apart on the ground. A lexical scale may cause problems if it expressed in a language that the user does not understand or in obsolete or ill-defined units. For example, a scale of one inch to a furlong (1:7920) will be understood by many older people in countries where Imperial units used to be taught in schools. But a scale of one pouce to one league may be about 1:144,000, depending on the cartographer's choice of the many possible definitions for a league, and only a minority of modern users will be familiar with the units used. Large scale, medium scale, small scale Contrast to spatial scale. A map is classified as small scale or large scale or sometimes medium scale. Small scale refers to world maps or maps of large regions such as continents or large nations. In other words, they show large areas of land on a small space. They are called small scale because the representative fraction is relatively small. Large-scale maps show smaller areas in more detail, such as county maps or town plans might. Such maps are called large scale because the representative fraction is relatively large. For instance a town plan, which is a large-scale map, might be on a scale of 1:10,000, whereas the world map, which is a small scale map, might be on a scale of 1:100,000,000. The following table describes typical ranges for these scales