Optical fiber splicing method and apparatus. The method comprises aligning the ends of the fibers to be spliced by a procedure comprising coupling radiation into one of the fibers, the transmitting fiber, stripping nonfundamental mode radiation from the other fiber, the receiving fiber, and detecting the stripped radiation in such a manner that a substantial fraction of the detected radiation is lowest order nonfundamental mode (LP.sub.11) radiation for at least some relative position of the fiber ends. By adjusting the relative position of the fiber ends to minimize the detected power, the fibers are aligned. The procedure not only permits accurate alignment but can also be used to determine the splice loss. Apparatus for the practice of the method is also disclosed.