2.9 Explicit appearance
A map’s value is gained from its explicit appearance. It is open to gestalt feeling and can be usefully viewed in part or as a whole, from varying distances and it can be addressed from any starting point; the same is simply not true of a piece of writing. A piece of text held so that none of the characters of the typeface on the page can be read holds no useful information until all of the text comes into focus; it has just one level of information. A map, however, can be read in any order and for a purpose determined by the reader. Whereas language enforces a strict ordering on the subject matter and so has to be mentally processed against knowledge to get anything other than the author’s intent, the map is “route neutral”. Finally, a map is a continuous space and so can better express situations in the real world that is also continuous space. Hence, the mind can interpolate or extrapolate without requiring explicit attention from the reader.
