Glossary of terms

Vertical exaggeration

Vertical exaggeration is the deliberate use of different horizontal and vertical scales on a longitudinal profile — the vertical is drawn at a larger scale than the horizontal, typically 5–10 times (e.g. length 1:500, height 1:100). This makes small slopes and elevation differences legible even though the route is hundreds of metres long. The numeric values in the table (elevations, slopes, lengths) stay exact and independent of the exaggeration — only the picture is distorted. When reading a profile, remember the steepness of the invert line is optical; read the real slope from the label, not from the angle on the drawing.