Alignment - Definition and Overview

An alignment refers to adjustment of an object in relation with other objects. It has a more specific meaning in some disciplines.

• In typesetting lines of text can be aligned left, right, centered or justified (see Justification (typesetting)).

• In biology and bioinformatics sequence alignment is used to display similarites between protein or nucleic acid sequences. Similarities in 3D structure of protein molecules can be also presented in the form of structural alignment.

• In role-playing games alignment refers to the moral and ethical perspective of characters (see Alignment (role-playing games)).

• Wheel alignment in an automobile means adjustment of the Camber angle between vertical axis of the wheel and vertical axis of the car to improve performace of the car.

• Compilers of computer languages may align individual variables to start at even byte boundaries or higher powers of 2 to speed up memory access.

• In artificial intelligence researchers attempt design computer programs to align (in other words identify) corresponding paragraphs, sentences, or words in bilingual texts (see parallel text alignment), or align corresponding parts of two images taken by different sensors.