I use both all caps and upper/lower; it depends on what I'm trying to do with the visual hierarchy of map elements.?ÿ ?ÿ
Everyone that drafts for me eventually gets my tedious and (I suspect) very boring "Maps are a language unto themselves...." lecture.?ÿ?ÿ
@andy-bruner Same for me. I had 1 year of Mechanical and 1 year of Architectural drafting, in the manual drafting days. Hundreds of 8 1/2" x 11" sheets, front and back, lettered 1/8" with 1/8" spacing ... all by hand for homework. My hand cramps to this day just thinking about all the hand lettering we did. Plus, my first party chief and LS both told me to use upper case at all times in the field books. It just stuck from there.
What is happening today is that everything is being scanned. It seems that the big issue with scanning is the quality. A quality scanner captures a crisp, clear scan of the map. When that is done there is a pdf that can be zoomed in, printed and copied so that each element on the map is clear. Even smaller text works well with a good scanner. A poor scanner makes a messy scan and often elements are lost. I refuse to make my new maps so that it will be look OK with a poor quality scanner, use a good scanner and my maps, even with some smaller details will work well.?ÿ
One type of map we make goes to a state agency. Back in the old days surveyors and engineers would often create colored maps. These worked great and even today they are very helpful. But no matter how often we plead with them, that agency will not allow newer maps to have any color. It all hangs on the issue of the first generation of scanners not being able to handle color very well and turning it all grey. Of course, that isn't an issue anymore. The old color maps compared to the newer hatched black and white maps show why we are begging to get rid of black and white hatching and go to color. Still not allowed.?ÿ
@mike-marks You have to have all that data on a map? Is this for recording or is that your worksheet?
An interesting resource
Thanks for posting that.?ÿ I'm a better drafter for having read it.
I use all uppercase for annotations, but notes of to the side, and almost everything as long as a sentence is written in correct English. With CAD and modern scanners the arguments against lower case letters don't hold much water anymore.?ÿ
...and yet you are exhibiting proper capitalisation as you speak.
@geoff-ashworth
wHAT sETTING IS tHAT?
hOW DO i DO THAT TO AVOID TYPING LIKE THIS?
@mike-marks You have to have all that data on a map? Is this for recording or is that your worksheet??ÿ?ÿ
Crazy, but that's the rules.?ÿ Coords for every found monument & record bearing/distances for every leg alongside my observations.?ÿ This is an actual ROS that was recorded, a snippet of a 16 sheet submittal, which took six months to prepare and submit.?ÿ Thank God I was working for an agency and was paid maybe $45,000 in wages to research/survey/draft it for submittal.?ÿ I was embarrassed 'till my boss pointed out it's a 70 million dollar new freeway alignment through an urban area so the ROS better be rock solid; the surveying/office costs are trivial, less than a?ÿ half million altogether.
My CAD worksheet was much more convoluted with all the record data from different eras shifted to SPC to conform with contemporary survey data.?ÿ It stressed my capabilities.?ÿ My first submittal was rejected because the survey crews found a few old survey monuments in repose & the County (after months of review) demanded they be declared lost and coordinates from their GIS would control.?ÿ I was mightily pissed because we could send out a crew that could tape between 2 centerline monuments and clearly show they're 2' different than the County "Official" maps.?ÿ The boss said accede to their demands & get this ROS out the door pronto, which meant another month of editing the map to put in the faked monuments and adjust everything.
Yah, I lied and signed a map as a licensed land surveyor where I knew stuff was fake but in the big picture, it was only here and there that things were wrong, 95% of the map was rock solid.?ÿ Future surveyors may damn my name when they find those original monuments in the bad spots but overall it was a pretty good survey.?ÿ I made big bucks doing it and suspect I'll be dead before the shit hits the fan, if ever.
Obviously local standards and personal preference are the biggest determining factors in answering the OP's question.?ÿ For me, learning and using City of Houston standards for the majority of my beginning years as a hand drafter and CAD drafter, I have always preferred all labels for existing improvements as lower case, with an oblique angle of 22.5 degrees (scriber opened up fully).?ÿ Proposed improvements are upper case, with no oblique angle.?ÿ The lower/upper case requirements are still in their design manual after all these years (I have spent most of the last 20 years in Indiana but I checked the manual before this post), yet their sample drawings don't follow the requirements.?ÿ Go figure.
Of course, I find myself having less and less input when it comes to drafting standards as the years go by, as youngsters always know better than me.?ÿ I shake my head at most drawings these days as I can never tell what's existing and what's proposed.
I don't remember what my drafting teachers in high school preferred.?ÿ One was a mechanical guy, and one was an architectural guy.?ÿ Everyone else in my classes either drew mechanical drawings or architectural plans, while I was drawing plats and plan and profiles.
Oh, and as for notes, whether it's dedicatorial language on a plat, or metes and bounds or notes on a survey, I personally prefer to see it written with regular capitalization. That's just the drafter in me. In my opinion it looks cleaner.
It all hangs on the issue of the first generation of scanners not being able to handle color very well and turning it all grey.
More importantly - if you are relying on color to convey information you are failing to clearly communicate with the, roughly, 5-10% of the population that is color blind.
That's a lot of people and that's a lot of decisions being made on ambiguous info (any info you are trying to communicate through the use of color) and that's expensive for end-users and that's not in the best interest of your clients.
I hand drafted for several years when I first started and the all caps has stuck with me, that and printing instead of cursive. ?ÿIt??s bad enough I have a really hard time printing in lower case or writing in cursive.?ÿ
Right-click in your MTEXT editor and select ALLCAPS and you're set.
