In the IEEE 754-2008 standard (referred to as IEEE 754 henceforth), a quiet NaN or qNaN is a NaN which is quiet in the sense of rarely signaling a floating-point exception. This is in contrast to the signaling NaN (sNaN) which often occurs in conjunction with any number of exceptions and handling mechanisms defined therefor (IEEE Computer Society 2008).

arithmetic | biased exponent | floating-point algebra | floating-point arithmetic | floating-point exponent | floating-point normal number | floating-point number | floating-point preferred exponent | floating-point quantum | floating-point representation | IEEE 754-2008 | interval arithmetic | NaN | signaling NaN | significand | subnormal number