Help:City location descriptions
This help page specifies the guidelines for city location descriptions. Their purpose is to put into words every feature's whereabouts within a city. The features of a city are primarily its company depots.
General guidelines
Formatting
City location descriptions are placed in a section named Locations in city articles. To avoid duplication, such a section should not appear in articles for suburbs, towns or villages. The Locations section should be placed after both Features and Connections because it usually builds upon both. More info about city pages can be found in the layout guidelines.
City location descriptions should be definition lists (in source editor: ; and : ).
Such lists will be displayed with the capitalized company name rendered in bold type and with the description indented.
The definition list should be the first content in the Locations section in a city article, as its entries are self-explanatory to the reader.
Additional content may appear as required in the form of prose paragraphs below the definition list.
- Company Name
- Location description.
Grammar and tone
City location descriptions should be written tersely, in a neutral and matter-of-fact tone. Use of the personal pronouns "our" and "you" must be avoided. Step-by-step / turn-by-turn directions should generally also be avoided.
To begin writing a location description, try to formulate a complete sentence that starts like this: "XYZ is located on ABC street ..."
Since the definition list already states the company name (XYZ) in bold type just before the description, the name is redundant. And since the section header already says "Locations", the words "is located" are redundant as well. The opening sentence should be abbreviated accordingly; typically, it just starts with a preposition like "on":
Locations
- Home Store
Home Store is locatedon Quillan Street. 🚫- Home Store
- On Quillan Street. ✅
Ideally, descriptions should begin by identifying the street used to directly access the location (like for the street address of your home). Most streets are long enough that some additional detail should be given next (e.g. cross streets), making the location description more precise. Further notes may be added at the end of the description (e.g. freeway exit). Use commas to provide boundaries between phrases as appropriate. Exceptionally, complete sentences may be appended after a full stop.
- Home Store
In Kennewick at Quillan Street and 27th Avenue.🚫On Quillan Street in Kennewick, at 27th Avenue.🚫At Quillan Street and 27th Avenue in Kennewick.🚫- On Quillan Street at 27th Avenue in Kennewick. ✅
- On Quillan Street at 27th Avenue, in the southwest of Kennewick. ✅
Street names
| Generic | Abbreviation |
|---|---|
| Avenue | Ave / Av |
| Boulevard | Blvd |
| Drive | Dr |
| Lane | Ln |
| Street | St |
| Road | Rd |
| Way | Wy |
A street name is one of the most specific particulars to describe a location. Its use often leads to precise and neutral language, which is good.
There is not yet an established preference for the use of abbreviations of generics; pick whichever way you find more aesthetically pleasing. However, do make sure your use is consistent throughout the article. Abbreviations may be better suited for articles using lots of street names than for those using few. The table to the right lists some of the most common English street name generics and their abbreviations.
The parts of cities which are modeled in ATS are usually small enough that only a single quadrant is represented, therefore cardinal points (e.g. "1st Ave South") are generally superfluous and should be omitted.
- Gonzales & Son
- On
EastWilson Street atNorthSpruce Lane. 🚫- On Wilson Street at Spruce Lane. ✅
- On Wilson St at Spruce Ln. ✅
Route numbers
Route numbers often refer to highways hundreds of miles in length, which makes them less specific than street names. But route number signage is often much larger and easier to read than street name signs are. Because street names and route numbers can complement each other well, both should be mentioned wherever they exist, with the route number (or RSIGN shield) in front of the street name. Route numbers can also be used solo in cases where no street name is signed in the game.
For roads with multiple route numbers, it may not be necessary to give the full set (remember, we aim for brevity). However, overlapping routes can be mentioned purposefully in cases where this improves the location description.
- Gen Lab Chemicals
By 9th Street, off🚫
to the east.
- By 9th Street, off
- Top Car
- On I-80 Bus. / 3rd Street at Curtis Street. ✅
- On
3rd Street at Curtis Street. ✅
- On
exit 310. ✅
- On
3rd Street at Curtis Street. ✅
There is currently no consistent standard for the size of {{RSIGN}} route shields. For ATS, size 25 may be preferable to the default size, which is 20.
Locations not on named streets
When the street the company depot is located on has no name, there is often a nearby higher-order street with a name (or route number) that can be referred to instead. It will then typically be necessary to identify a specific spot on that higher-order street, and to explain where the company depot is located relative to that spot. The latter can often be done by simply using compass points; but if the relative location will be obvious to arriving drivers, it may be sufficient to only describe the location of that specific spot, rather than the company depot itself.
Carefully select prepositions that make the circumstances reasonably clear. Keep in mind that others may wish to use your descriptions to find these locations in the game. Make an effort to try and avoid weasel words such as "near" that would be unhelpful to drivers approaching an intersection. To convey to the reader that the identifiable road/spot being near the company depot is sufficient information, consider the following less vague expressions:
- "Off" implies access via the identified road, without being located directly on it.
- "Accessed from" makes reachability via the identified road explicit.
- "By" implies that a location is directly adjacent to the identified road, without necessarily having direct access from it.
If you're not sure how to go about this, it may be helpful to try and formulate a complete sentence in your mind that starts something like this: "XYZ is located on an unnamed street north of ABC street ..."
- Capone International
Capone International is located on an unnamed streetnorth of Taft Boulevard, along the railroad tracks. 🚫- North of Taft Boulevard, along the railroad tracks. ✅
- Off Taft Boulevard to the north, along the railroad tracks. ✅
- John Dear Forestry
On an unnamed forest road that branches off of🚫40 miles east of Prineville.
- Accessed from
- Nextar Oil
- By
exit 37. ✅
Locations not easily described
Some locations are difficult or impossible to describe well in a succinct and neutral manner. For example, a location may be embedded so deep inside a large and complex city that a useful description would need to verbosely include the path through the city. To address such situations, consider the following points:
- Many drivers arrive by interstate or by another major highway. Identifying a single interchange or intersection where drivers would need to leave that highway can go a long way to make a description more useful. Bonus points for adding the compass direction of where to go from there.
- When a single interchange/intersection can't be identified, it might help to mention the general area of a city instead, using compass points—e.g. "in the northeast of the city". This can at least give drivers an idea of where to start looking.
- Where necessary, step-by-step (or turn-by-turn) directions may be used to describe the path through a city. The preferred style is to imply the 2nd person rather than use the passive voice (for brevity and clarity). A useful pattern is to first give the street location of the company, before appending the steps necessary to reach it from e.g. the closest interstate exit. However, remember that step-by-step directions require a single identified starting point that can work for drivers approaching from most directions. Such a point may not always exist.
- If a location truly cannot be described at an appropriate level of detail while maintaining brevity and clarity, it's okay to just give a very general description and refer readers to the map; however, this should really be an exceptional case.
See the articles on Port Angeles and Spokane for some examples of these patterns.
Target audience and level of detail
Finding the right amount of detail to include in city location descriptions can seem difficult at first. When writing, think of your audience as a person with the following traits:
- Has never been to the specific location being described.
- Has been to the city before maybe once or twice, and is thus roughly familiar with the general layout. (A brief glance at the city map might give a similar level of familiarity.)
- Has kept the yellow XXX blockers enabled.
Ideally, city location descriptions are written such that people who choose to turn off the XXX blockers at least have a chance to avoid running into any invisible walls. Similarly, those who are completely unfamiliar with the city would ideally still be able to find the route to their destination.
However, there is no need to make city location descriptions perfect or fool-proof. Their inherent brevity will almost always imply a little ambiguity, requiring drivers to be a little bit careful. In particular, there is absolutely no need to cater to people who both turn off the blockers and go in completely "blind". If you manage to cover even this scenario, that's great, but please do not sacrifice brevity or clarity for it.
Facilities for trucking
- if a city offers a type of facility, then the location of one such facility should be described
- goal is a minimal set of entries in the locations list (brevity and clarity)
- completeness of facilities of a type is not a goal (they are functionally interchangeable)
- facility types should not be capitalized; truck service icons should be used
- cities without gas station or rest area should briefly describe the closest services in prose below the list (e.g. Olympia)
Recommended procedure
A good approach for writing city location descriptions is to follow these steps:
- Assemble a list of all company depots in a city. Don't forget deliverable gas stations, which are usually not indicated on the map. Possible sources include the company articles and Nautofon's company locations directory.
- Use the companies to produce a wikitext definition list. Ready-made source pastes are available for AZ, CO, MT, NM, OR, TX, UT, WY.
- Add facility icons such as
to company depots where appropriate. - If the city offers facilities that don't already appear in the list after the previous step, add a minimal set of additional list entries for these, such that every facility type appears at least once.
- Use the dev cam to fly around the city. Go through the list one by one and write down the location descriptions in accordance with these guidelines. An efficient strategy is to do the easy locations first.
- Handle special cases if applicable (e.g. Special Transport or missing fuel/rest).
- Finally, please add your result to the list of completed cities in the project status overview.
Here are a few general points and hints to consider:
- Double-check everything
- You're not writing this for just one person, you're writing it for potentially thousands of readers and ATS/ETS2 players. Please try hard to avoid typos and other mistakes. Be especially careful around directions (e.g. east and west can be easy to confuse).
- Avoid vagueness
- While location descriptions should be short, they should still be specific. Providing a location description that's like "yeah it's near the highway" is functionally equivalent to not providing a description at all.
- Do repeat yourself
- Parts of location descriptions that are identical within a city should be expressed identically. While avoiding this would be good style in prose writing, exact repetition helps readers to quickly recognize the duplication in lists and can make parsing them easier (e.g. Olympia).
- Use the dev cam
- The research required for this work cannot realistically be done without the dev cam. If you are unable to use the dev cam comfortably, there's probably no point in even trying this. (In theory it might be possible to just drive around to gather all the info, but it'll take forever, so you're almost certain to miss something important this way.)
Special cases
Multiple locations of the same company
When a company has multiple depots in the same city, they sometimes share a common location (for example, Voltison in Santa Fe). These cases are best described in a shared list entry.
For cases where the depots are not that close to each other, each depot should receive a list entry of its own. The list entries need to be disambiguated by including an informal description of each prefab after the company name. This prefab description should be in lower case (as opposed to the company name, which should be capitalized). The wording of informal prefab descriptions should be chosen such that it is possible to discern the functional company branch. Other than that, it is at the editor's discretion. Possible sources include the table column headers in company articles and the "Branch" column in Nautofon's company locations directory.
For Wallbert locations, it is suggested to include the terms "food" and "non-food" only for cities that do in fact have both "food" and "non-food" Wallbert variants.
Special Transport
For company locations that are Special Transport pick-up points, add the {{ST jobs}} icon 
after the company name and append a short explanation at the end of the location description.
The preferred wording is: "Offers Special Transport jobs."
Special Transport pick-up points that are not regular company locations require a location description of their own, which should be titled "Special Transport {{ST jobs}}". This situation is quite rare; as of 2022, the only examples in ATS are Idaho Falls and Vernal (see driving directions).