Due to the importance of chiral separations of drugs, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and xenobiotics by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE), it is important to have the knowledge of the enantiomeric recognition mechanisms so that scientists may design and module the new chiral selectors for rapid, inexpensive and reproducible chiral separations; specially at preparative scale. The mechanisms of the chiral separation by HPLC and CE using polysaccharides, cyclodextrins, macrocyclic glycopeptide antibiotics, Pirkle type, ligand exchangers, crown ethers and other several types of chiral selectors have been discussed. Various complex formation and different types of interactions responsible for chiral resolution have been presented in detail. © 2006 Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn/GWV Fachverlage GmbH.