Using the article's "window" analogy: denormals are in the smallest "window", so the sort order between the "windows" (exponents) is kept. Their special propert

Using the article's "window" analogy: denormals are in the smallest "window", so the sort order between the "windows" (exponents) is kept. Their special property is that they don't have the implicit one to the left of the point (it's an implicit zero instead); the order within the mantissa is still kept. That is: 0 000000 0100010101010111 ± exp. mantissa Here, the value is 0.0100010101010111₂ × 2^-30 (I hope I calculated the exponent correctly) As a bonus, the zero value comes naturally in this approach: it's a denormal with a mantissa of zero. Without denormals, the implicit one would get in the way.