How to Lie with Maps

Ratio and verbal scales are useless on video maps, since television screens and thus the map scales vary widely and unpredictably.

Graphic scales are particularly safe when a newspaper or magazine publisher might reduce or enlarge the map without consulting the mapmaker.

I want to make readers aware that maps, like speeches and paintings, are authored collections of information and also are subject to distortions arising from ignorance, greed, ideological blindness, or malice.

Map users must be aware that cartographic license is enormously broad.