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Points of the Compass

The compass is used to find directions. You should know all the points of the compass. If you can say them all in order, it is called boxing the compass. Can you do it?

First of all, you need to know where North and South are, and West and East. You can remember that west is on the left and east on the right, because it makes the word "we". (There's no such word as "ew"!)

Then you put the directions halfway between each of these points. Between west and north, is NE (or north-west), and between South and East is SE (or south-east). You always say South-East, not East-South - the rule says that the most important direction comes first (and North and South are more important than West and East.

If you want to be really clever, you can put the bearings between these points too! You need to remember that East is more important than South-East, so that comes first when naming the direction between East and South-East. It becomes ESE (East South East.) Between North and North-West it is called NNW (North North-West). Sailors would call that "nor nor-west".

If you can say all these points of the compass in order, you can box the compass!