Editing Significand (section)

==The hidden bit in floating point==

For a [[normalized number]], the most significant digit is always non-zero.  When working in [[binary number|binary]], this constraint uniquely determines this digit to always be 1. As such, it is not explicitly stored, being called the ''[[hidden bit]]''.

The significand is characterized by its width in [[Bit|(binary) digits]], and depending on the context, the hidden bit may or may not be counted toward the width. For example, the same [[IEEE 754]] [[Double-precision floating-point format|double-precision format]] is commonly described as having either a 53-bit significand, including the hidden bit, or a 52-bit significand,{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}} excluding the hidden bit. IEEE 754 defines the precision ''p'' to be the number of digits in the significand, including any implicit leading bit (e.g., ''p'' = 53 for the double-precision format), thus in a way independent from the encoding, and the term to express what is encoded (that is, the significand without its leading bit) is ''trailing significand field''.