This article is rated Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Maps High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Maps, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Maps and Cartography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MapsWikipedia:WikiProject MapsTemplate:WikiProject MapsMaps High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Since all of "bar scale", "graphic scale", "graphical scale" and "linear scale" are in general use, I picked "Linear scale" for the title of the article (with redirects from the other three) because it's the official IHO designation and might, therefore, be the most useful generally. . . . . Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 17:32, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In may experience the commonest term is "scale bar", which I've just added to the lede. "Scale bar" gives 1.6 million hits on google, compared to 140,000 for "bar scale", 41,000 for "graphic scale", 6,760 for "graphical scale" and 385,000 for "linear scale". On that basis I propose that this article be renamed to "scale bar". Mikenorton (talk) 22:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Bar scale" is the only one of the four which appears in Bowditch's glossary. On the other hand, the British Admiralty Mariner's Handbook defines "scale":

"Scale (on a chart of a map). A graduated line used to measure..."

None of the others are mentioned. As this may be a question of American versus British usage, "Linear Scale", as noted above, the official IHO designation, has an official standing that all of the others lack.

Google totals are dependent on many things, including the searcher's location and how busy the search engine is at any given moment. Try the same search at a different time and you will get different results. My results are:

• graphical scale - 13,800,000
• linear scale - 8,960,000
• scale bar - 8,900,000
• bar scale - 8,440,000
• graphic scale - 7,090,000

. . Jim - Jameslwoodward (talk to me • contribs) 11:42, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]