Decimal floating point (3 or 4 binary bits), and the rest of the significand uses the densely packed decimal (DPD) encoding. Unlike the binary integer significand version, where the exponent changed position and came before the significand, this encoding combines the leading 2 bits of the exponent and the leading digit (3 or 4 bits) of the significand into the five bits that follow the sign bit. This is followed by a fixed-offset exponent continuation field. Finally, the significand continuation field made of 2, 5, or 11 10-bit "declets", each encoding 3 decimal digits. If the first two bits after the sign bit
Decimal separator Decimal separator A decimal separator is a symbol used to separate the integer part from the fractional part of a number written in decimal form. Different countries officially designate different symbols for the decimal separator. The choice of symbol for the decimal separator also affects the choice of symbol for the thousands separator used in digit grouping, so the latter is also treated in this article. Any such symbol can be called a decimal mark, decimal marker or decimal sign. But symbol-specific names are also used; decimal point and decimal comma refer to an (either baseline or middle) dot and