One example map, and to me a pretty typical example of the genre, shows Alaska on a about half the scale of the contiguous states. Compare the by the scale mark

One example map, and to me a pretty typical example of the genre, shows Alaska on a about half the scale of the contiguous states. Compare the by the scale markings: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Map_of_USA_with_state_names_2.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Map_of_U... This is not simply projection effects, this is explicit downscaling. Another comparison, Wikipedia lists the area of Alaska as 1,717,856 km^2 and that of the contiguous United States 8,080,400 km^2, so on a map with only projection correction Alaska should be around 1/4 of the size of the lower 48, this is clearly not true on the wikipedia example shown above, and for any other map in the same style. So no, Alaska is not scaled down for the sake of accurately depicting its size.