In the Formatter specification of handling of BigDecimal output for the 'e' and 'f' options, the outupt is phrased as "If the precision is less than the number of digits which would appear after the decimal point in the string returned by Float.toString(float) or Double.toString(double) respectively, then the value will be rounded using the round half up algorithm." A more natural and more correct phrasing would be in terms of BigDecimal.scale() and BigDecimal.precision(), which clearly map to the related Formatter concepts.