Thank you everyone. Using NumberForm[] achieves what I wanted to achieve.

Dave

Compare these 2 variations of NumberForm:

(As a picture. Code does not turn up very well here in this case)

N[] seems to work for some numbers (I assume things like irrationals), but not for machine precision

In[321]:= c0Agilent

Out[321]= 74.7209748595

In[322]:= N[c0Agilent, 5]

Out[322]= 74.7209748595

Despite using N[], the number is still printed to far more significant digits than wanted. I agree this method works with irrational numbers

In[323]:= N[Pi, 5]

Out[323]= 3.1416

In[324]:= N[1/7, 5]

Out[324]= 0.14286

but it does not work with machine precision numbers.

Any other suggestions?

Notice the differences beween the following methods:

c = 1/1.7;

Round[%, 0.00001]
FullForm[%]

N[c, 5]
FullForm[%]

NumberForm[c, {\[Infinity], 5}]
FullForm[%]

Round will round the number, but because numbers are stored in binary, the least significant digits might cause a slight deviation.

N will change a MachinePrecision number to arbitrary precision number, this number will now 'act' differently, because you set the precision of a Machine precision number to 2.

N[Sqrt[2], 2]
%^2

will not return 1.96, but rather 2. because of the limited precision it was given/told.

NumberForm will only display a certain number of digits but does not change the number, i.e. excellent for printing.

... Also, I strongly suggest that you avoid using Capital letters to begin your variable names -- these are reserved for internal Mathematica variables and functions. It works fine until you accidentally stumble on an internal name and then it is really hard to figure out why something suddenly does not work. For example C1 and C2, etc. are often returned as arbitrary constants from equation solving.