Points of the compass 32-wind compass rose is yielded from the eight principal winds, eight half-winds and sixteen quarter-winds combined together, with each compass direction point at an ° angle from the next. In the mariner's exercise of boxing the compass, all thirty-two points of the compass are named in clockwise order. The traditional compass rose of eight winds (and its 16-wind and 32-wind derivatives) was invented by seafarers in the Mediterranean Sea during the Middle Ages (with no obvious connection to the twelve classical compass winds of the ancient Greeks and Romans). The traditional mariner's wind names were expressed in Italian, or more
Points of the compass points such as north by east (NbE) between north and north-northeast, and northeast by north (NEbN) between north-northeast and northeast. A compass point allows reference to a specific course (or azimuth) in a colloquial fashion, without having to compute or remember degrees. The European nautical tradition retained the term "one point" to describe of a circle in such phrases as "two points to starboard". By the middle of the 18th century, the 32-point system was extended with half- and quarter-points to allow 128 directions to be differentiated. The names of the compass point directions follow these rules: In summary, the