West-Northwest, a Secondary Point of the Compass Rose

West-northwest is a bearing of 292.5 degrees, midway between west and northwest. It is the last of the eight secondary intercardinal points. One further practical matter is worth recording alongside them. Bearings can be given as true, relative to the geographic pole, as magnetic, relative to the magnetic pole, or as grid, relative to the vertical lines of a map projection, and the three differ; navigators and surveyors convert between them routinely.

Historical alignments of buildings and monuments are normally reported as true bearings and are compared against the astronomical positions of the period, since the sky itself has shifted with precession over the millennia. Any claim that an ancient structure is aligned to a compass point should specify which kind of bearing is meant and against what date, since an alignment stated loosely can be made to fit almost anything.