My question is in regard to land survey notations placed on the drawing that is made by the surveyor. If for example on the drawing is shows point A to point B as being S 58 degrees, 45' W. I can understand what that mean, however directly under that there appears to be another notation 140.38' How is the 140.38' read as? Is it inches, feet, yards or what? I am use to seeing an inch notation as ( " )

The ' notation means feet, so 140.38' means 140.38 feet. If you want to convert the 0.38 part to inches multiply by 12:

0.38 feet x 12 inches/foot = 4.56 inches.

That's my reading too. Decimals are 1/10 not 1/12

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Originally Posted by ebaines

The ' notation means feet, so 140.38' means 140.38 feet. If you want to convert the 0.38 part to inches multiply by 12:

0.38 feet x 12 inches/foot = 4.56 inches.

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Thank you for the response. It is difficult to understand the reason behind the .38 because one could read it in mils or some other scale of measure. It took me awhile to understand the notational direction because the person who wrote or drew the plot of land made it difficult to read, for example what should have been read as S.55 looked like was 5.55 The S looked like a 5 but was not then there's the .38 which probably only a surveyor could understand why it was written that way.

A land survey would not use mils (thousandths of an inch). In the old days it may have been scaled in rods or chains, but today in the US common practice is to use feet. There ought to be a scale on the survey drawing which will give you a basic idea of the size of the property.