Multiple-choice cloze
For questions 1-8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.
We tend to it for granted that if a street or village appears on a map, it must exist. Yet for decades cartographers have been quietly small fictions into their work. These 'trap streets', as they are known, serve a practical purpose: if a rival publisher reproduces the invented detail, it provides proof that the map has been copied rather than independently surveyed. The most celebrated case a hamlet in upstate New York that two mapmakers invented in the 1930s by rearranging their initials. Some years later, a general store was built at the very crossroads where the fictitious name had been printed, and its owners, seeing it on a map, the name for their business. The imaginary place had, in effect, into being. Such deceptions may strike us as harmless, but they sit with the expectations of people who depend on maps to find their way. With most of us now on digital mapping services, which are constantly corrected by their users, it is far from clear whether trap streets still serve any useful function.
Conseil: cliquez sur un numéro d'espace pour aller à sa question.