Nonfloating

Nonfloating is an adjective used in several disciplines to describe items, data, or content that does not exhibit buoyancy or that remains fixed in place relative to a reference frame. The meaning depends on the domain.

In physics and engineering, nonfloating refers to substances or bodies that sink or stay submerged rather than float on a liquid, typically because their density exceeds that of the surrounding medium. In fluids with interfaces, nonfloating can describe objects that are not buoyant.

In computing, nonfloating is used to describe numeric representations that do not rely on floating-point arithmetic. Nonfloating, or fixed-point and integer-based representations, store whole numbers or scaled integers and avoid the complexities of floating-point computation, offering predictable precision and often faster performance on limited hardware.

In document layout and typography, nonfloating describes content that is part of the main text flow rather than a floating element such as a figure or table. Nonfloating elements are positioned by the text layer in which they appear and are not automatically moved by layout algorithms. Some typesetting systems refer to such content as inline or in-flow.

In other contexts, nonfloating can describe anything that is attached, anchored, or otherwise not designed to float, such as nonfloating structures that remain fixed to a substrate.

See also: floating point, fixed-point arithmetic, inline elements, LaTeX floats.