ArcGIS Tutorial: Labelling contours effectively

Labeling contours in ArcGIS is easy. Labeling them so they look good and stand out against the background is not as easy. First off, if you have contours on your map, make sure they are brown with a line weight of 1px. This is just cartographic standard... any other colour will confuse the map reader.


Here is the methodology :

Go to the layers property menu for your contour Shapefile in ArcMAP. For the test string label select your zvalue attribute (z value is the cartesian coordinate for elevation/altitude). This layer may not be named in the same way as you see in the image below. But it will most likely carry a name such as Z value, elev, elevation etc... This is the attribute you want the line to show . eg. 250 meters
For the symbol select brown and a sans serif fonts (another mapping convention). The most important part now, is to select the placement properties...

Select the following setup: Orientation curved; Postion Above(check), On the Line (check)