  We discuss the determination of elemental abundances from high resolution
X-ray data. We emphasize the need for an accurate determination of the
underlying temperature structure and advocate the use of a line ratio method
which allows us to utilize, first, the strongest lines observed in the X-ray
spectra, and second, lines that span a rather wide temperature range. We point
out the need to use continuous emission measure distributions and show via
example that modeling in terms of individual temperature components yields
errors of more than 50%. We stress the need to derive differential emission
measure distributions based on physical assumptions and considerations. We
apply our methods to the Chandra LETGS spectrum of Algol and show that nitrogen
is considerably enhanced compared to cosmic abundances by a factor of 2 while
carbon is depleted by at least a factor of 25. Iron, silicon, and magnesium,
are all depleted compared to cosmic abundances, while the noble gas neon has
the relatively highest abundance.
