How to Read Longitude and Latitude

by John Rapp © 2009

Here's a quick and dirty explanation of how to read longitude and latitude, the geotracking navigation system you'll find being used every once in a while in various random places like the Navy, your car's GPS tracking device and of course the Boy Scouts.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. 

   STEP OFF

   Before you learn how to read longitude and latitude, this navigation system can be confusing and irritating. But really it's not so bad. The latitude is written in degrees, using the symbol °, and it is based on an imaginary grid that almost perfectly divides up the earth. Check out this picture for a more visual representation.

2. 

   STEP IN: READ LONGITUDE AND LATITUDE

   No time like the present, boy. Let's read us some longitude and latitude, shall we? Here's an example of a precise point on the earth represented as longitude and latitude. Let's geocode the address of my favorite locally-owned and operated taco shop within a four-mile radius, Roscoe's Tacos! Roscoe's Tacos is located at

   642 S Madison Ave.
   Greenwood IN 46142

   Now that same address written in the form of longitude and latitude looks like this:

   39°36'24"N, 86°6'26"W

   (39.606759, -86.107287)

   39 ° 36.4055', -86 ° 6.4372'

   These are all three different ways of writing the same thing in terms of longitude and latitude.

3. 

   PACK IT UP: DECODING THE MYSTERIOUS LONGITUDE AND LATITUDE

   The weird symbols stand for different measurements of either degrees, minutes or seconds. Sometimes people take it one step further and divide seconds into even smaller units of time such as tenths, hundredths, thousandths and probably how ever small you want to make them, pal. That's just the way math works sometimes.

   So if you want to speak the longitude and latitude coordinates out loud for good old Roscoe's Tacos (39°36'24"N, -86°6'26"W) you would say, "Roscoe's Tacos is located at 39 degrees, 36 minutes, and 24 seconds north of the equator and 86 degrees, six minutes and 26 seconds west of the meridian passing through Greenwich, England).

4. PACK IT IN: WRITING LONGITUDE AND LATITUDE

   A geocoder is a tool that converts written street addresses into the weirdness known as longitude and latitude. Check the Additional Resources section below for a direct link to an easy and free online geocoder. Just type in an address, an intersection, a city or a zip code and it will geocode it away into a longitude and latitude format. If you want to know how to manually convert directions into longitude and latitude without the use of a calculator program, I suggest you search long and hard on Google and maybe you'll find what you're looking for. And if not, just be satisfied with the free geocoding program. There's nothing wrong with letting computers do some brain work for you. That's what we made them for, right? They crunch the numbers which allows us to free up our brains and use them for higher functions. Like further confusing the matter with weird systems like longitude and latitude.

Tips & Warnings

• A zero in any of the degrees, minutes, seconds or otherwise is still accounted for by saying "no minutes," "no seconds" or any other units you come up with

• Writing this sort of fried my brain - take a break before it gets out of hand

• Thinking about longitude and latitude for too long can make you go bonkers

Resources

• GeoCoder.net - find the latitude & longitude of any US address - for free
• Add The Original Roscoe's Tacos Site
• Regular Dude vs. The American Dream Blog