Division of the field

The earliest such record in the Scottish Public Register is before 1677, "parted per chief azure and gules three skenes argent hefted and pomelled Or Surmounted of as many Woolf-heads couped of the third.

The arms of Pope Benedict XVI is "tierced in mantle" – as described in Vatican information pages, but the usual term in, for example South African heraldry, is chapé ployé (with arched lines, with straight lines: chapé (mantled)), which may be blazoned with three tinctures or just two – e.g. Okakarara Technical Institute: Gules, chapé Azure, on the partition lines respectively a bend and a bend sinister enhanced, in base a demi-cogwheel, Or, with a fountain issuant.

[3] This is to be distinguished from the essentially unique partition in the arms of the 2nd Weather Group of the United States Air Force, which is Dexter per chevron ployé and sinister per fess enhanced.

[5][6] One common reason for dividing the field in heraldry is for purposes of combining two or more coats of arms to express alliance, inheritance, occupation of an office, etc.

As this would sometimes yield confusing or misleading results, the practice was supplanted by impalement, which kept both coats intact and simply squished them into half the space.

[8] In the UK heraldries, complex systems of marshalling have developed, and continue to thrive, around heraldic expressions of inheritance.

[10] Volumes may be written on all the endless heraldic possibilities of this convoluted system of marshalling, but it may suffice here to say that for various purposes, arms may be marshalled by four basic methods: dimidiation by clipping and splicing two coats (usually per pale), impalement by dividing per pale and crowding an entire coat of arms into each half, quartering by dividing the shield into usually four (but potentially innumerable) "quarters", and superimposition by placing one coat of arms inescutcheon over another.

[13] Among the most common of these are engrailed, invected, indented, dancetty, wavy (also called undy), nebuly, embattled, raguly, dovetailed and potenty (pictured below).

Sometimes the division of the field may be fimbriated (lined) or, perhaps less properly, "edged"[17] of another tincture, or divided by some ordinary or its diminutive.