The Four Patterns Formed by a Pair of ELS's

There are only four basic patterns that two ELS's can form with each other. Three are special because they are rare, and the fourth is the general case that doesn't fit into the other three.

One special pattern is called 'parallel', where the ELS's have the same skip (or close multiple of each other's skip - for example one has twice or three times the skip of the other). Such ELS's appear parallel to each other in a table.

A second special pattern is called 'collinear', where the two ELS's are in the same column (if, in addition, they both have the same skip and there is no gap between them, the two ELS's together form one long ELS).

A third special pattern is 'perpendicular'. This is defined as the case where one of the ELS's has very small skip and appears horizontally in a table, and the other ELS appears vertically nearby.

The fourth pattern is 'diagonal', the most common, and therefore not one that has been isolated to study separately. Here, two ELS's fit on the same picture but have different skips which are not multiples of each other. In this case one ELS will always be diagonal to the other, regardless of table width.

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