Points of the compass
varying quantity (4, 8, 16, 32, rarely more than 32, or special value 24) or directional divisions marked on a compass
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 or compass directions 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.
Designations
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, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Welsh the part meaning north or south precedes the part meaning east or west.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Points of the compass” is varying quantity (4, 8, 16, 32, rarely more than 32, or special value 24) or directional divisions marked on a compass. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Points, compass and varying, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11114344. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Points of the compass” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.