Compass orientation

The two major ways in which we can orient ourselves are in terms of compass directions and clock directions.

A compass has 4 major "cardinal points" at 90° to each other; north, south, east and west. This can be further divided by the "half cardinal points" north-east, south-east, south-west and north-west.

We sometimes want to be even more specific. The division of the half cardinal points are known as the "false points", otherwise known as "three letter points", as they take a major cardinal direction + a half cardinal direction for example ESE orients east by south-east. The 8 false points are NNE, ENE, ESE, SSE, SSW, WSW, WNW and NNW.

The last refinement I will describe are the "by points". These are the points dividing the false points and so there are 16 of them on a compass rose. For example, north by east is between north and north-north-east.

It can be handy to visually divide a battlefield into segments that can be quickly described to help pin-point an object of interest to your team. A rectangular area can be cut into 4 as the north-west segment, the north-east segment and so on.