LINK uses each segment's alignment type to set the starting address for the segment. The alignment types are BYTE, WORD, DWORD, PARA, and PAGE. These correspond to starting addresses at byte, word, doubleword, paragraph, and page boundaries, representing addresses that are multiples of 1, 2, 4, 16, and 256, respectively. The default alignment is PARA.
When LINK encounters a segment, it checks the alignment type before copying the segment to the executable file. If the alignment is WORD, DWORD, PARA, or PAGE, LINK checks the executable image to see if the last byte copied ends at an appropriate boundary. If not, LINK pads the image with extra null bytes.