What is the essay's central claim?

Every flat map must distort something, so the real question is which error it accepts. (The first paragraph sets this up and the third repeats it: no projection is neutral, so a map is a choice about what matters.)

What does the essay say the sailors' rectangular map keeps honest?

Directions ('The familiar rectangular world map... keeps directions honest.' Area is exactly what it gets wrong.)

What does the writer want a reader to do with any short summary?

Ask what it had to distort in order to be useful. (The last paragraph makes the transfer: accuracy is not enough; ask what was distorted to make it useful.)

"None of them is neutral" means that no projection is

free of choice, favoring nothing (The next sentence explains: a map is an argument about what matters, so every projection takes a side.)

Every Map Is Wrong: Level 3 Reading Comprehension Questions

Every flat map of the world is wrong, and it has to be. A sphere cannot be pressed onto a sheet of paper without stretching or tearing something. The only real question is which error the mapmaker chooses to accept.

The familiar rectangular world map, drawn for sailors in the sixteenth century, keeps directions honest. A straight line on it is a course a ship can actually steer, which is exactly what a navigator needs. The price is area. Land far from the equator is inflated, so Greenland swells until it looks as large as Africa, though Africa is about fourteen times bigger.

Other projections keep area true and bend the shapes instead. None of them is neutral, because none of them can be. A map is an argument about what matters most: shape, or size, or direction.

This is worth remembering outside geography. Any summary of a complicated thing is a projection. It is not enough to ask whether it is accurate. Ask what it had to distort in order to be useful.

Comprehension questions