To extend the edit distance algorithm to produce an alignment, we can start by visualizing an alignment as a path through the edit distance matrix. Figure 2 .19 shows this path with the boldfaced cell. Each boldfaced cell represents an alignment of a pair of letters in the two strings. If two boldfaced cells occur in the same row, there will be an insertion in going from the source to the target; two boldfaced cells in the same column indicate a deletion.