Alignment

Alignment is the adjustment of an object in relation with other objects, or a static orientation of some object or set of objects in relation to others.

• An alignment of megaliths: see stone row.
• Alignment (role-playing games) refers to the moral and ethical perspective of (fictional) characters.

It has a more specific meaning in some disciplines:

• Typographic alignment, in typesetting, lines of text or images can be aligned left, right, centered or justified.
• Sequence alignment shows similarities between protein or nucleic acid sequences (also in bioinformatics).
• Structural alignment presents similarities in 3D structure of protein molecules.
• Wheel alignment in an automobile means adjustment of the camber, castor, and/or toe to improve performance and maintain proper tire wear characteristics of the car
• Data structure alignment, in computer programming, refers to arranging data in memory
• Parallel text alignment, in artificial intelligence
• Ontology alignment, in heterogeneous knowledge bases, the expression of the correspondences between two ontologies is called ontology alignment
• Body alignment, in sport and dance, the proper placement of the bones so that the muscles do less work
• Morphosyntactic alignment, in linguistics, the properties determining the grammatical relationship between verbal arguments of various kinds
• Fibre alignment, in optoelectronics, to connect two Optical fibers to each other

Other fields where the term "alignment" has a particular meaning:

• Ley line, an interpretation of an alignment of a number of places of geographical interest, such as ancient megaliths. Archaeogeodesy is the study of such alignments.
• In integrated circuit fabrication, alignment is the step in a photolithographic process in which a mask used to pattern a layer of the circuit is registered in its x-y position with respect to the wafer (usually silicon) on which the circuit is being formed.

External links

• Mechanical alignment for rotating equipment (pumps & turbines)