The four main compass directions are north, south, east and west. North points toward the North Pole, south points toward the South Pole, the sun rises roughly in the east and sets roughly in the west, and a compass finds north for you because its magnetised needle lines up with Earth's own magnetic field.
The Four Cardinal Directions and a Trick to Remember Them
North, south, east and west are called the cardinal directions. The word "cardinal" comes from a Latin word meaning "hinge", because everything else in map reading swings off these four. On almost every map you will ever see, north is at the top, south is at the bottom, east is on the right and west is on the left.
The easiest way to remember the order is to start at the top and go clockwise, the way a clock's hands move: North, East, South, West. Lots of kids use the sentence "Never Eat Soggy Waffles". Others prefer "Never Eat Shredded Wheat" or "Naughty Elephants Squirt Water". Any sentence works as long as the first letters go N, E, S, W.
Here is a second trick. If you face north and stretch out both arms, your right hand points east and your left hand points west. South is directly behind you. The letters help too: West and East spell "WE" when you read them left to right across the map.
- North (N): toward the North Pole and the Arctic Ocean. 0 degrees on a compass dial.
- East (E): the side where the sun comes up. 90 degrees.
- South (S): toward the South Pole and Antarctica. 180 degrees.
- West (W): the side where the sun goes down. 270 degrees.
Northeast, Southwest and the Rest of the Compass Rose
Real journeys rarely go exactly north or exactly east, so sailors long ago added directions in between. Halfway between north and east is northeast (NE). The other three are southeast (SE), southwest (SW) and northwest (NW). These four are called the intercardinal or ordinal directions. Notice that north or south always comes first in the name: it is "northeast", never "eastnorth".
Put all eight together on a drawing and you get a compass rose, named because the pointed design looked like the petals of an opening flower to the mapmakers who first drew them. Old sailing charts went much further. Between north and northeast sits "north-northeast", and between that and northeast sits "northeast by north". A full rose has 32 points, each 11.25 degrees apart, and learning to recite all 32 in order was called "boxing the compass". It was a test every young sailor had to pass.
Today most people skip the 32 names and use degrees instead. A compass dial is a circle, and a circle has 360 degrees, so every direction has a number. North is 0 (or 360), east is 90, south is 180 and west is 270. A hiker might say "walk on a bearing of 45 degrees", which is just a precise way of saying northeast.
What Makes the Needle Point North
Deep inside Earth, about 2,900 kilometres below your feet, is a layer of liquid iron and nickel called the outer core. As it swirls, it turns the whole planet into a gigantic but weak magnet, with one magnetic pole in the far north and one in the far south. A compass needle is a tiny magnet too, balanced on a pin so it can spin freely. Opposite magnetic poles attract, so the needle swings around until it lines up with Earth's field and its painted end settles pointing north.
There is a catch that surprises most people. The needle points to the magnetic north pole, which is not in the same place as the geographic North Pole where the lines of longitude meet. Magnetic north currently sits in the Arctic Ocean well north of Canada, and it does not stay still: it has been drifting toward Siberia at roughly 40 to 55 kilometres a year in recent decades, fast enough that the world's magnetic maps are updated every five years. The angle between the two norths is called declination, and serious map users correct for it. You can read more about why the two differ in our explainer on magnetic north versus true north.
Because the needle is a magnet, other magnets and iron objects confuse it. Hold a compass next to a steel bridge, a car, a phone speaker or a fridge magnet and it will swing the wrong way. Good navigators step away from metal before taking a reading.
Finding North Without a Compass
People found their way for thousands of years before compasses existed, and you can use the same clues today.
- The sun. It rises in the east and sets in the west everywhere on Earth. At midday in the Northern Hemisphere the sun is due south, so your shadow points north. In the Southern Hemisphere, in Australia or Argentina, the midday sun is in the north instead, so the shadow points south.
- The shadow stick. Push a straight stick into flat ground and mark the tip of its shadow with a pebble. Wait 15 minutes and mark the new tip. A line between the two pebbles runs west to east, with the first pebble at the west end.
- The North Star. Polaris sits almost directly above the North Pole, so it barely moves all night while the other stars wheel around it. Find the Big Dipper, follow the two stars at the end of its bowl, and they point to Polaris. This only works north of the equator.
- The Southern Cross. South of the equator there is no bright south star, but the long arm of the Southern Cross points toward the south celestial pole. Extend it about four and a half times its own length, then drop straight down to the horizon for south.
- A watch with hands. In the Northern Hemisphere, point the hour hand at the sun. Halfway between the hour hand and 12 o'clock is roughly south.
Polynesian sailors crossed thousands of kilometres of open Pacific using stars, swells and birds, with no compass at all. Their methods are described in our guide to Polynesian navigation.
A Compass Versus a GPS: Which Is Better?
Your phone has both. A GPS receiver listens to signals from satellites orbiting about 20,000 kilometres up and works out where you are, usually to within a few metres. A compass only tells you which way you are facing. So why do hikers, pilots and ships still carry compasses?
- Batteries. A GPS dies when the battery does. A magnetic compass has no battery and keeps working in a snowstorm, underwater or at the bottom of a canyon.
- Signal. GPS needs a clear view of the sky. Thick forest, deep valleys, tunnels and tall buildings block it. A compass works anywhere there is no nearby iron.
- Direction while standing still. A GPS only knows which way you are heading once you move. A compass tells you instantly, which is why phones include a tiny electronic compass, called a magnetometer, to turn the map the right way round.
- Position. Here the GPS wins outright. A compass alone cannot tell you where you are, only where north is. To find your position with a compass you also need a map and visible landmarks.
The best answer is to use both. Pilots and sailors are still trained to steer by compass in case their electronics fail, and the little arrow on your phone map is a compass reading, not a GPS one. Our post on how GPS works explains the satellite side.
Who Invented the Compass?
The compass was invented in China. The earliest version, from around the 2nd century BC during the Han dynasty, was a spoon carved from lodestone, a naturally magnetic rock, that spun on a polished bronze plate until its handle pointed south. It was not used for travelling at all. Fortune tellers used it to decide which way buildings should face.
About a thousand years later, during the Song dynasty, Chinese scholars discovered that rubbing an iron needle on lodestone magnetised it, and that a needle floating on water or hanging from a thread would point north and south. The scientist Shen Kuo described this clearly in 1088, and within a few decades Chinese ships were steering by compass on cloudy days. The idea reached the Mediterranean by about 1190, when an English monk named Alexander Neckam wrote about sailors using a needle. By the 1300s, Italian sailors had mounted the needle on a card painted with a compass rose, giving us the instrument we recognise today.
That invention changed the map of the world. Ships could now sail out of sight of land in any weather, and the long voyages of the 1400s and 1500s that linked Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas would have been far harder without it.
Try It Yourself: Three Compass Activities
- Make a compass. Stroke a sewing needle 30 times in one direction with a fridge magnet. Push it through a small slice of cork or float it on a leaf in a bowl of water, away from anything metal. It will slowly turn to line up north-south. Check it against the sun.
- Direction detective. Stand at your front door in the morning and note where the sun is. That is roughly east. Work out which way your house, your school and your bedroom window face. Which rooms get morning light and which get evening light?
- Treasure hunt by bearings. Hide a prize in the garden or park, then write clues like "walk 10 steps northeast, then 5 steps south". A friend with a compass app has to follow them. Swap roles and see whose directions are clearer.
Once you can tell north from south without thinking, every map becomes easier to read, from a school atlas to the one in our maps for kids guide.