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 international blueprints. However, English-speaking countries took the comma to separate sequences of three digits. In some countries, a raised dot or dash ("") may be used for grouping or decimal separator; this is particularly common in handwriting. In the United States, the full stop or period (.) was used as the standard decimal separator. In the nations of the British Empire, although the full stop could be used in typewritten material and its use was not banned, the interpunct (also known as the decimal point, point, or mid dot) was preferred for the decimal separator in printing technologies that could