We explain what a dimension is and where they are found. Furthermore, its specific meaning in theater, technical drawing and maps.
What is a dimension?
In general, those notes, signs, signals or notes that are made outside of something that is, on the edges or outskirts of a plane, a written work or some type of document. Its name comes from Latin ad– (“towards”) and cautus (“careful”), so it can also be understood as a warning or clarification.
Notes are usually made to a working document, a draft or a previous version, since the content of the marginal annotations usually consists of modifications, amendments or comments that must be taken into account. Even a teacher's grades and written interventions on a paper or exam can be considered notes.
However, this term also has different technical or specialized uses, which depend on the specific discipline to which we refer, as we will see below.
Theatrical notes
In the world of dramaturgy or theater writing, the stage directions or didascalias They are certain types of authorial interventions in the script of the work which are distinguished from the rest of the dramatic text by being italicized, in square brackets, or highlighted in some other way.
Its function is to indicate the movements and actions that occur on scene and they are not part of the characters' dialogue. In other cases, they explain the specific way a character performs an action or says some part of his speech.
Theatrical stage directions thus replace the role of the narrator, absent in the dramatic genre, and are almost always written in the third person, briefly and succinctly, so as not to hinder the reading of the dialogues that make up the piece.
Dimensioning in Technical Drawing
When we talk about dimensioning in the context of design, specifically graphic design and technical drawing, we are referring to the representation of the visual dimensions and proportions of an object determined, through a series of symbols, figures and lines that make up the language of the discipline. Its name comes from the fact that these signs and figures are known as “cotas”, that is, measurements.
Thus, dimensioning in technical drawing consists of finding and explaining the measurements of an object or space, which can be done with two different criteria:
- Dimension dimensions which give the reader information about the proportions of an object: how long its sides are, how many degrees some of its angles are, etc. An example of this is the graphic descriptions of industrial machinery parts for their manufacture.
- Situation dimensions which provide the reader with information regarding the location of an object within a space: how far it is from other objects or walls, at what angle of inclination it is arranged, etc. An example of this is the sketch that a traffic prosecutor makes to record how a road accident occurred.
Dimensions on a map
For its part, in cartography, the dimensioning provides very specific information to users of a map, such as the topography features of the region represented and other additional data, that do not constitute part of the layout of the earth's surface and that they are independent of the scale of the map. These types of dimensions are usually highly standardized according to international standards such as ISO standards.
References
- “Annotation” in Wikipedia.
- “Acotation” in the Dictionary of the Language of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Dimensioning” in Technical Drawing Portal.
- “Notes” at the University of Granada (Spain).
- “Radicación de Acotación” in the Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary.
