Read the e-notation part.

Hi Christian, Try this: title(sprintf('Surface Ions per nm^2: %0.2f x 10^%i', 10^mod(log10(surfaceIons),1),floor(log10(surfaceIons))))

You may wish to give the command format short g or format long g

"format short" or "format long". See also your Preferences -> Command Window Preferences, as the default can be set there.

with format long;x=1:10 = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 vpa only adds one zero: y=vpa(x,5) = [ 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0] y=vpa(x,10) = [ 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0] floating point boundaries (without vpa): flintmax = 9.007199254740992e+15 intmax = 2147483647 intmin = -2147483648 with fixed point precision objects, details here: you get more than 4 zeros: a = fi(pi, 1, 8, 3) a = 3.125000000000000 DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling Signedness: Signed WordLength: 8 FractionLength: 3 but only if it is rounding non-zero decimals: a = fi(1, 1, 8, 3) = 1 DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling Signedness: Signed WordLength: 8 FractionLength: 3 a = fi(1.0000, 1, 8, 3) = 1 DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling Signedness: Signed WordLength: 8 FractionLength: 3 tried 1.0001 and then -0001 but did not work: b = fi(1.0001, 1) b = 1.000122070312500 DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling Signedness: Signed WordLength: 16 FractionLength: 14 b-.0001 Warning: The behavior of adding or subtracting a fi and a non-fi operand has changed. The non-fi operand is now cast to the data type of the fi operand. See the release notes for information on retaining the old behavior of best precision scaling cast. In - (line 37) = 1 DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling Signedness: Signed WordLength: 17 FractionLength: 14 c=b-.0001 = 1 DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling Signedness: Signed WordLength: 17 FractionLength: 14 b2=fi(0.0001,1) = 1.000016927719116e-04 DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling Signedness: Signed WordLength: 16 FractionLength: 28 b-b2 = 1.000022068619728 DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling Signedness: Signed WordLength: 31 FractionLength: 28 d=b-b2 = 1.000022068619728 DataTypeMode: Fixed-point: binary point scaling Signedness: Signed WordLength: 31 FractionLength: 28 d2=vpa(d,4) = 1.0 If you really want to present the vector exactly with 4 zero decimals, you can translate each figure to char, x=[1:1:4] x_char=char(x+48)' = 1 2 3 4 and then add '.000' x2=repmat(['.0000'],4,1) = .0000 .0000 .0000 .0000 x_char=[x_char x2] = 1.0000 2.0000 3.0000 4.0000 If you find this answer of any help solving your question, please click on the thumbs-up vote link, thanks in advance John jgb2012@sky.com

ahmed - just try m = 1:0.5:10;

reshape( 1:100, 10, 10) .'

Because the % symbol indicates that the rest of the line is a comment. So the only non comment parameter Matlab sees is the first 10.