Curious Omission In New-Style Formats

[Ian Kelly]

On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 10:02 AM, Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:
> Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com>:
>
>> The significand of -3.14159 is the sequence of digits 314159. The
>> mantissa of -3.14159 is the number 0.85841.
>
> Fight it all you want. However:
>
>    In American English, the original word for [significand] seems to
>    have been mantissa (Burks[1] et al.), and this usage remains common
>    in computing and among computer scientists.
>    <URL:
>    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significand#Use_of_.22mantissa.22>

Just because it's already common to use the wrong term doesn't mean
the usage should be promulgated further.