I re-designed the map order worksheets during my time at WOTC as manager of cartography. Mainly it was just to make the worksheets completely digital and accessible for anyone who was to design maps for our game worlds. These are the final versions which were being used up till 2003 at WOTC.  The list of map symbols goes back to the dawn of role playing game maps and TSR.  Dave Sutherland and Dennis Kauth were the two people who really started all of the organized nature of making map orders easier to produce for the TSR RPG R&D design department.  

Dennis Kauth was originally from an engineering background, so he even made sure that all of the symbols had a corresponding number in case of the situation where someone was not able to draw things out in a competent manner, they could just simply write a number on the map reference and circle it, thus making “it” the object or feature from the master key.  The mapping standards is one of the first things Dave & Dennis showed me when I started work in the mapping department at TSR in the early 90s.  

In those days the whole thing was a large packet of stuff in a folder,  including several different sized blank map pages, the symbols list and a  blank fold-up poster map sheet printed with a hex grid for the old ‘gazetteer” style maps and a few examples of how to draw a proper map reference.  For the most part everyone in R&D used these map standards to create their map references,  however there were always a few that would come in on cocktail napkins and such but it was really worth it to have a standard  for the map orders.  Fun little bit of history,  Good times and Good gaming!