I'm not sure how to word that, and I think the code describes it better.
Effectively as per title the latter discards the sign of negative numbers.
This happens on both jq 1.8.1 and 1.7.1.
Without Decimals Specified
include "printf";
0.2, -0.2
| printf("%f")
With Decimals Specified
include "printf";
0.2, -0.2
| printf("%.2f")