Decimal Day old coins were returned to the banks and in this way the bulk of them were quickly taken out of circulation. The new halfpenny, penny, and twopence coins were introduced on 15 February 1971. Within two weeks of Decimal Day, the old penny (1d) and old threepenny (3d) coins had left circulation, and old sixpences were becoming rare. On 31 August 1971, the 1d and 3d were officially withdrawn from circulation, ending the transition period. The government intended that in speech the new units would be called "new pence", but the public decided that it was clearer and quicker to
Decimal to the left of the decimal separator (see also truncation). For a nonnegative decimal, it is the largest integer that is not greater than the decimal. The part from the decimal separator to the right is the "fractional part", which equals the difference between the numeral and its integer part. When the integral part of a numeral is zero, it may occur, typically in computing, that the integer part is not written (for example , instead of ). In normal writing, this is generally avoided because of the risk of confusion between the decimal mark and other punctuation. Decimal numerals