The different subtypes of laterals have different roles in the water system. For example, service laterals bring water from the distribution mains to residences or businesses, and hydrant laterals bring water from mains to fire hydrants. You will see how to make the labels for the hydrant laterals red to make it easy for map readers to differentiate hydrant laterals from other laterals.

Sometimes you want to label features with the content of a single field. The Label Field dropdown list lets you select a single field with which to label features. At other times, you may want to create more complex labels. The Label Expression dialog box lets you construct labels by concatenating one or more fields and other text. You can also add logic to the label expression using a scripting language.