
In
map projections
In cartography, map projection is the term used to describe a broad set of transformations employed to represent the two-dimensional curved surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitud ...
, an interruption is any place where the globe has been split. All map projections are interrupted at at least one point. Typical
world maps are interrupted along an entire meridian. In that typical case, the interruption forms an east/west boundary, even though the globe has no boundaries.
[https://www.mapthematics.com/Downloads/Gores.pdf The design of globe gores]
Most map projection can be interrupted beyond what is required by the projection mathematics. The reason for doing so is to improve distortion within the map by sacrificing proximity—that is, by separating places on the globe that ought to be adjacent. Effectively, this means that the resulting map is actually an amalgam of several partial map projections of smaller regions. Because the regions are smaller, they cover less of the globe, are closer to flat, and therefore accrue less inevitable distortion. These extra interruptions do not create a new projection. Rather, the result is an "arrangement" of an existing projection.

In casual parlance, ''interrupted projection'' usually means a projection that has been interrupted beyond mathematical necessity. In this casual sense, the usual east/west interruption of a
pseudocylindric map is ignored as an interruption to focus on the elective interruptions. An archetypical example is the
Goode homolosine projection
The Goode homolosine projection (or interrupted Goode homolosine projection) is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps. Normally it is presented with multiple interruptions. Its equal-area property makes i ...
. In 1916,
John Paul Goode
John Paul Goode (21 November 1862 – 5 August 1932), a geographer and cartographer, was one of the key geographers in American geography’s Incipient Period from 1900 to 1940 (McMaster and McMaster 306). Goode was born in Stewartville, Minnesot ...
experimented by interrupting the
Mollweide projection. Satisfied with the interruption scheme, he then devised a new projection as a composite of the Mollweide and the
sinusoidal projection
The sinusoidal projection is a pseudocylindrical equal-area map projection, sometimes called the Sanson–Flamsteed or the Mercator equal-area projection. Jean Cossin of Dieppe was one of the first mapmakers to use the sinusoidal, appearing in ...
and applied the same interruption scheme to the new projection, which he dubbed "homolosine".

Because pseudocylindric projections map
parallels as straight lines, and meridians to have constant spacing, they are easy to interrupt.
This is normally done to optimize either for continental areas or for oceanic areas, as explored by Goode.

Many interruption schemes that are much more elaborate have been developed. Since antiquity, for example,
globe gores have been developed in order to paste map sections onto model globes. These are regular interruption either along the equator,
or in polar form as "rosettes". The
Cahill butterfly projection divides the world into octahedral sections. More generally, any mapping onto polyhedral faces becomes an interrupted map when laid flat.
Buckminster Fuller proposed his
"dymaxion" map in 1943, using a modified icosahedral interruption scheme to divide the oceans up in a way that shows the continents in a nearly continuous mass as "one island". The most elaborate interruptions schemes include those of
Athelstan Spilhaus along continental boundaries, and
JJ Wijk's myriahedral projections.
[https://www.win.tue.nl/~vanwijk/myriahedral/ Unfolding the Earth: Myriahedral Projections]
References
{{Map projections
Map projections