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 time units like minutes, hours, days and years are much more common, and are accepted for use with SI. It is possible to specify the time of day as the number of kiloseconds or myriaseconds elapsed since midnight. Thus, instead of saying 3:45 p.m. one could say (time of day) 56.7 ks. There are exactly 86.4 ks or 8.64 mys in one day. However, this nomenclature is rarely used in practice. Scientists often record (rather than observe) time as decimals. For example, decimal days divides the day into 10 equal parts, and decimal years divides the year into 10 equal parts.