The Atlas presents full colour maps of the distribution among the pidgins and creoles of 120 structural linguistic features drawn from their phonology, syntax, morphology, and lexicons. The languages include pidgins, creoles, and contact languages based on English, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and French and languages from Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Each map is accompanied by a commentary. The project is the successor to the successful
World Atlas of Language Structures and draws on the same linguistic, cartographic, and computing knowledge and skills of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. The Atlas is published
alongside a three-volume Survey of Pidgins and Creoles which describes the histories and linguistic characteristics of 71 languages. The books have been designed, edited, and written by the world's leading experts in the field and represent the most systematic and comprehensive guide ever published to the world's pidgins, creoles and mixed languages. Individually and together the books are a unique resource of outstanding value for linguists of all persuasions throughout the world.