*UPDATED* Ramp naming convention proposal
UPDATE: After this discussion and significant testing, I have concluded that this proposal should be pushed forward. If anyone has any objections, please speak now. I will put this up to a vote shortly.
Examples are provided for clarity in this post.
Hey everyone,
I've been testing a few ideas I've had for punctuation in ramp naming and how it works with TTS.
All the changes can be simplified to one thing: adding colons between highway shields and road/city names. This will insert a pause in TTS rather than running all the words together: "Exit right, at Eye Ten East New Orleans" becomes "Exit right, at Eye Ten East -- New Orleans".
Most of the time a sign presents you with a shield and some text, it will be showing one of two things: the place that highway will take you or a local name for that highway. A colon is logical either way:
"to US-61: Airline Dr / Tulane Ave" -- Airline and Tulane are local names for 61. Two names for the same thing, similar to a title/subtitle relationship, cf. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo".
"to I-310 S: Boutte / Houma" -- 310 takes you south to Boutte and, later, to US-90, which takes you to Houma. A way and a destination, cf. "Flight 439: San Francisco (SFO)".
I propose that the colon be used on entrance ramps, exits, and pathfinder signs (where appropriate):
Entrance ramps: "to I-10 W: Baton Rouge" and "to I-10 E: Slidell"
Exit: "Exit 230: I-610 E: Slidell"
Pathfinder: "I-10 E: New Orleans Business District" (new)
I would include the pathfinder for routing here because I-10 splits off to the right, with as many lanes of travel as I-610, which continues straight on the left. Intuition would lead you to believe that I-10 continues to the left, but this is not the case, so there should be an instruction. This is accomplished with one short freeway segment named as such.
Exit: "Exit 220: I-310 S: Boutte / Houma"
In this case, I would not put the pathfinder on the map, because I-10 continues west through the three leftmost lanes of travel.
The only thing that looks a bit kludgy is the double colon in exit names, but I believe this is the best alternative. A comma looks way out of place, a hyphen or dash takes up too much room, a space alone does not provide the logical pause, and a slash is misleading by making it seem like the highway and the city/local name are separate options (besides, slashes don't pause yet).
I know it's always a lot of work to change all the ramps and so forth, but as I said before, I think we should hold ourselves to the best standards we can.
Examples are provided for clarity in this post.
Hey everyone,
I've been testing a few ideas I've had for punctuation in ramp naming and how it works with TTS.
All the changes can be simplified to one thing: adding colons between highway shields and road/city names. This will insert a pause in TTS rather than running all the words together: "Exit right, at Eye Ten East New Orleans" becomes "Exit right, at Eye Ten East -- New Orleans".
Most of the time a sign presents you with a shield and some text, it will be showing one of two things: the place that highway will take you or a local name for that highway. A colon is logical either way:
"to US-61: Airline Dr / Tulane Ave" -- Airline and Tulane are local names for 61. Two names for the same thing, similar to a title/subtitle relationship, cf. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo".
"to I-310 S: Boutte / Houma" -- 310 takes you south to Boutte and, later, to US-90, which takes you to Houma. A way and a destination, cf. "Flight 439: San Francisco (SFO)".
I propose that the colon be used on entrance ramps, exits, and pathfinder signs (where appropriate):
Entrance ramps: "to I-10 W: Baton Rouge" and "to I-10 E: Slidell"
Exit: "Exit 230: I-610 E: Slidell"
Pathfinder: "I-10 E: New Orleans Business District" (new)
I would include the pathfinder for routing here because I-10 splits off to the right, with as many lanes of travel as I-610, which continues straight on the left. Intuition would lead you to believe that I-10 continues to the left, but this is not the case, so there should be an instruction. This is accomplished with one short freeway segment named as such.
Exit: "Exit 220: I-310 S: Boutte / Houma"
In this case, I would not put the pathfinder on the map, because I-10 continues west through the three leftmost lanes of travel.
The only thing that looks a bit kludgy is the double colon in exit names, but I believe this is the best alternative. A comma looks way out of place, a hyphen or dash takes up too much room, a space alone does not provide the logical pause, and a slash is misleading by making it seem like the highway and the city/local name are separate options (besides, slashes don't pause yet).
I know it's always a lot of work to change all the ramps and so forth, but as I said before, I think we should hold ourselves to the best standards we can.
Re: Ramp naming convention proposal