The aim of the geographic description is to provide the web user with a concise but meaningful description of the country, including the following data:
official name, according to the FAO/United Nations list;
location (international boundaries and when necessary, latitude and longitude);
territorial area in square km;
relevant topographical features, i.e. mountains, highest peaks plains and their location;
brief land cover description, forests, lakes, rivers, savannas, deserts and their location;
main climatic features: temperature in Celsius degrees and rainfall in millimetres.
The introductory paragraph must be concise (no more than 5 lines) and will carry the official name of the country (according to the FAO/U.N. system), its location including its international boundaries (latitude and longitude when the location is not clear, like in the case of islands) plus its territorial area in square kilometres, e.g.
Jamaica, one of the Greater Antilles, is located in the Caribbean Sea between latitudes 17Ί 45' and 18Ί 30'north and longitude 76Ί 15' to 78Ί 30 ' west. Its total area is 10 990 Km2 .
When the country is not an island, its description could be as follows:
The Argentine Republic, the second largest country in South America, is bounded on the north by Bolivia and Paraguay, on the east by Brazil, Uruguay, and the Atlantic Ocean and on the south and west by Chile. It has an area of 2 780 400 km2 .
The political status of the territory must be clearly indicated to show whether it is an independent nation state, a commonwealth territory, or a dependency or overseas territory e.g.
French Guyana is an overseas department of France. It is bounded on the north by the Atlantic Ocean, on the east and south by Brazil, and on the west by Suriname. Its area is about 90 000 Km2 .
The intermediate paragraphs will describe the topographical relief of the country, i.e. mountains, peaks, plains. Moreover, it will include a brief land cover description i.e. lakes, rivers, deserts, savannas and, of course, forests and their location.
This part of the text may vary in length, according to the extension and geographic complexity of the country. The use of bullets or a description divided into separate regions (one per paragraph) may be helpful to keep the description concise and clear, e.g.
Example No. 1
Four main regions can be distinguished in Guyana:
The northern coastal belt, consisting of low-lying alluvium with a varying width reaching a maximum of 65 km inland. This is the main agricultural region of the country.
The lowland region of undulating forest land, covering most of the northern and central parts of the country, generally with an elevation below 150 m and consisting of broad belts of white sand.
The Pakarima mountain region in the west, an elevated table land of sandstone escarpments between 300 and 1 200 m in elevation corresponding to similar formations in the south-east of the Venezuelan Guyana and the Brazilian territory of Roraima.
The southern uplands, a vast area mostly over 150 m in elevation covered with undulating forestland.
Example No. 2
The Paraguay River divides the country into two distinctive regions, namely, the Gran Chaco, or Paraguay Occidental in the west, and Paraguay proper, or Paraguay Oriental, in the east.
The Gran Chaco is part of an alluvial plain extending into Bolivia on the west, Argentina on the south and Brazil on the east. Coarse grasses, scrub forests and salt marshes cover the area.
Paraguay proper consists of the southern extension of the Paranα plateau. The highest point is San Rafael at 850 m. The land has rolling hills, fertile soil and thick forests. Although the country lies partially within the tropics, the forests host a large number of tree species along with epiphytes, lianas, ferns and palms. On its western edge, the plateau falls off sharply to fertile grassy lowlands along the Paraguay River; in the east it descends gradually toward the Paranα River.
The final paragraph will describe (no more than 5 lines) the climate prevailing in the country, namely the temperature, in Celsius degrees and rainfall, in millimetres, e.g.
Haiti has a mild tropical climate greatly influenced by topography. Temperatures range from 21 to 35Ί C along the coasts and from 10 to 24Ί C in the mountains. Rainfall varies from 3 600 mm on the western tip of the southern peninsula, to 600 mm on the south-west coast of the northern peninsula.
Names of countries, mountains, rivers, seas, oceans etc. take capital letters, e.g. Red Sea, Pacific Ocean, mid-Atlantic, Santa Lucia River, Apennine Range, North America, South-east Asia.
When proper names are associated to a geographic feature (noun) but they do not properly name it, the noun is not capitalized, i.e. The forests stretch from the Amazon basin to the Pacific coast.
When written separately from names, nouns do not take a capital letter, e.g. sea, ocean, river, range, north, south-east.
Numbers from one to ten are written in letters. From 11 onward numbers must be written in figures.
Spaces and not commas or full stops will be used to separate figures denoting thousands, millions: the country has a total area of 756 626 km2
To avoid awkward number divisions at the end of lines press CTR+SHIFT+SPACEBAR.
Use percent (not per cent or %) in text, e.g. Eucalyptus spp. accounts for 80 percent of the plantations.
The use of % is acceptable in tables and graphs, e.g. 20% (with no space between the number and the symbol).
Units such as kilometres, metres, hectares, millimetres, degrees will be written in their abbreviated form and without full stop:
Chile stretches 4 270 km from north to south.
The Andes, with elevations over 6 100 m, include Chile's highest peak.
Average rainfall is about 1 300 mm, with local variations.
The inventory showed 148 000 ha of plantations.
Temperature in the Meseta Central range from 24 to 27Ί C the year around.
