Of course, in the setup we described earlier, we were using excess 50 notation, so 10⁹⁹ isn't even representable. 10⁵⁰ is actually 10⁰ and 10⁹⁹ is actually 10⁴⁹. Thus overflow occurs sooner.

What happens if the exponents are far apart? Then, when the adjustment is made prior to addition, the smaller will get turned into 0. For example:

           0.56740 x 1010
     +     0.48293 x 102
     -------------------

0.48293×10² becomes 0.04829×10³, 0.00482×10⁴, 0.00048×10⁵, 0.00004×10⁶ and finally 0.00000×10⁷, but we need to shift until the exponent is 10. Clearly, the first number is so much larger than the second that it is almost like adding 0 to it in real life, and in the world of representable floating point numbers, it is exactly like adding 0 to it.