Given a decimal-valued floating-point operation in the IEEE 754-2008 standard, the preferred exponent is the value of the exponent q which preserves the quantum of the operands whenever the result of the operation is exact.

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