Start here · the long version
What maps really asks you to write
Map language does two jobs at once: it locates a feature precisely enough that a reader could find it, and it reports what happened to that feature between the two maps.
Two jobs, and a sentence needs both
A map description that says what changed without saying where is unusable: “a supermarket was built” could be anywhere on the page. One that says where without saying what changed is a list of places. Every useful sentence in this visual carries both, and the vocabulary divides along exactly that line — a set of position words and a set of change verbs, combined one from each.
Position in English is more precise than instinct suggests, and the precision is free. “In the north” places something inside the area; “to the north of” places it outside and beyond something else. “Adjacent to” means sharing a boundary; “near” means neither. A reader with the map in front of them checks these, and the wrong preposition puts your building in the wrong place as surely as the wrong compass point would.
The change verbs are almost all passive, for the same reason as in a process: the map shows that a warehouse became flats and shows nobody doing it. And they are not interchangeable. “Demolished” means it was removed; “replaced by” means something took its place; “converted into” means the same structure was reused for something else. Three different histories, and the map distinguishes them.
Inside or beyond“in the north of the site” is inside it; “to the north of the site” is outside and past it.
Touching or not“adjacent to” shares a boundary. “Near” and “close to” do not claim contact.
Removed, replaced, reused“demolished” · “replaced by” · “converted into”. Three different things happened, and the map shows which.
No dates? No dates.If the maps say only “before” and “after”, that is the only framing available. Inventing years invents data.
What a map never tells you
A map shows what is there, not why. It does not say the village grew because the road was widened, or that the residents wanted a supermarket, or that any of it was an improvement. Every one of those is a sentence a writer produces without noticing, because the story feels obvious once the two maps are side by side — and every one is a claim about data that is not on the paper.
It also shows no quantities. There are no figures on a map, so trend and comparison vocabulary has nothing to attach to: nothing rose sharply, and nothing was twice as high as anything else. What a map has instead is what survived, which is the feature descriptions leave out most often.
What it costs you to skip this
Vague position wording makes a description unusable — a reader who cannot locate what you are talking about cannot verify any of it, and precision here is the whole point of the task. And using the wrong change verb misreports the history of a feature: writing that a building was replaced when the map shows it was converted claims a demolition that never happened.
Where it stops applying
No causes, no judgements, no predictions: the maps show what stands where at two moments and nothing else. No quantities either, so trend vocabulary has nothing to attach to. And when the maps carry no years, “before and after” is the only framing the visual supports — assigning dates to them is inventing data.
