It is ugly because it is ambiguous, convention not withstanding. You can artifically declare one interpretation to be the preferred one, but it will still be artificial. Here's a program for you to run...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

print "\n n| n^0.1  n^0.01 n^0.001 etc...\n";
print ("--+".("-" x 70)."\n");
for my $num (reverse 0..10)
{
    printf "%2d| ", $num;
    for my $exp (1..10)
    {
        printf "%5.4f ", $num ** (10**(-$exp));
    }
    print "\n";
}
[download]

Notice any tendencies? Is the case for zero different in any way? Explain.

 n| n^0.1  n^0.01 n^0.001 etc...
--+------------------------------------------------------------------
10| 1.2589 1.0233 1.0023 1.0002 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 9| 1.2457 1.0222 1.0022 1.0002 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 8| 1.2311 1.0210 1.0021 1.0002 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 7| 1.2148 1.0196 1.0019 1.0002 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 6| 1.1962 1.0181 1.0018 1.0002 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 5| 1.1746 1.0162 1.0016 1.0002 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 4| 1.1487 1.0140 1.0014 1.0001 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 3| 1.1161 1.0110 1.0011 1.0001 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 2| 1.0718 1.0070 1.0007 1.0001 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 1| 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 
 0| 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
[download]