Continuity Editing.

The purpose of continuity editing is to to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots.
Continuity editing can be split into two different categories: spatial editing and temperal editing.

Temperal editing:-
Revolves around controlling the flow of time in a film.
Different types of temperal editing are:

Elliptical - presents an action in such way that it takes less time on screen than in the story itself.

Overlapping Editing - this is used for temperal expansion and it prolongs an event. It takes more time on screen then in reality. Often action movies use this technique to slow the action down so that it is readable to the viewer. A good example of this would be a scene from the movie 'Mission Impossible 2' which can be found by clicking here.

Spatial Editing:-
This form of editing focuses mainly on the location and people in the movie. It's used to help the audience focus on where and who the characters are.

Different forms of spatial editing are:

180 degree rule - which states that when filming a scene caneras must stay within a 180 degree line, otherwise it becomes unclear to the audience where the characters are and may dis-orientate them.

Shot/Reverse shot - this is used to show that one character is looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the the angle is then changed to show the other character is looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.