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 Grammar of the International Language Ido) officially states that commas are used for the decimal separator while full stops are used to separate thousands, millions, etc. So the number 12,345,678.90123 (in American notation) for instance, would be written "12.345.678,90123" in Ido. The 1931 grammar of Volapük by Arie de Jong uses the comma as its decimal separator, and (somewhat unusually) uses the middle dot as the thousands separator (12·345·678,90123). In 1958, disputes between European and American delegates over the correct representation of the decimal separator nearly stalled the development of the ALGOL computer programming language. ALGOL ended up allowing different