A good answer might be:

Yes. (The sign bit is not part of the mantissa).

Practice

You must be eager to try this yourself!! Here is an opportunity. The number 7.4687510 written in base two positional notation is 00111.01111 (the leading zeros are not needed). What is the mantissa of this number?

Represent this number:  
Drop the leading zeros:
Move the binary point:
Drop the leading one:
Right-pad with zero:
The Mantissa is:


QUESTION 14:

(Review:) What part of the single precision float represents the shifted binary point?