Row- and column-major order

Row-major and column-major order are two different ways of storing information in a computer's memory. When you enter information into a computer, it stores the information in a certain way. Row-major order stores information going across each row in a grid, while column-major order stores the information going up and down each column in the same grid. For example, if you were to enter the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 into a grid, the row-major order would store the information like this:

1 2 3
4 5 6

And the column-major order would store it like this:

1 4 2
5 3 6

The way in which the information is stored affects the way it's read and used by the computer, so it's important to know which ordering is being used.