Talk:Roman numerals

Unicode chart

Should the chart be replaced with {{Unicode chart Number Forms}}:

Number Forms[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+215x

⅐

⅑

⅒

⅓

⅔

⅕

⅖

⅗

⅘

⅙

⅚

⅛

⅜

⅝

⅞

⅟

U+216x

Ⅰ

Ⅱ

Ⅲ

Ⅳ

Ⅴ

Ⅵ

Ⅶ

Ⅷ

Ⅸ

Ⅹ

Ⅺ

Ⅻ

Ⅼ

Ⅽ

Ⅾ

Ⅿ

U+217x

ⅰ

ⅱ

ⅲ

ⅳ

ⅴ

ⅵ

ⅶ

ⅷ

ⅸ

ⅹ

ⅺ

ⅻ

ⅼ

ⅽ

ⅾ

ⅿ

U+218x

ↀ

ↁ

ↂ

Ↄ

ↄ

ↅ

ↆ

ↇ

ↈ

↉

↊

↋

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

I don't like how it looks, but that entire group of templates could use some cleanup. —Random832 14:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I see Japanese characters in my web browser, Firefox, when I look at that chart. However, when I view the PDF, I can see that the chart should contain Roman numerals in place of the Japanese characters. This may vary from one browser to another. It would be nice to have an explanation (or a link to one) of how to get the Roman numerals to appear in a browser correctly. --Lance E Sloan (talk) 14:45, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I also use Firefox but do see the PDF Roman numerals, not Japanese characters. Nevertheless, I still see Chinese/Korean/Japanese characters when they appear in Wikipedia articles. The difference may involve how I initially downloaded Firefox because I knew I wanted to see all characters used throughout the world. — Joe Kress (talk) 05:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I particularly am seeing _some_ special characters, but also a lot that are what I guess pass for FFx's/its unifont's attempt at a "code not found" signal - the four-nibble unicode value inside a rectangular box. EG above, the bottom row of figures in the 3~8 columns (with boxes that show 21/83, 21/84 etc, in 2 rows of 2 each). The special characters in 0, 1 and 2 look just fine, though. This is using UTF-8, the only encoding that seems to give any result that isn't a/ everything on the page turning into a mass of unformatted chinese, b/ complete loss of intelligble special characters, replaced by extended ASCII pairs and triplets. Do I need to download some special font (poor show! maybe they need small graphical icons to go in their place?), or is it a coding error by whoever wrote the table? 77.102.101.220 (talk) 19:34, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Something seriously wrong

Hi there,

I came on here to determine the exact definition of roman numerals, and the article contradicts itself as far as I can see. The question is: can V proceed L?

The page says "10^n may not precede any symbol larger than 10^(n+1)". 5 is (approximately) 10^0.7. 10^(1 + 0.7) = 50.12. Therefore 5 cannot proceed any number larger than 50.12. Therefore 5 CAN proceed 50, and VL is ok. However, the list at the bottom has XLV for 45.

Well, then there's the fact that you approximated and 10^(n+1) = 10 * 10^n, so 5 cannot precede numbers larger than 50.

However, I believe that Kwamikagami below sums it up pretty nicely - n is an integer, so it only refers to I, X, C, M, etc.

For example, XD will not equal 490, but LD will not equal 450 either. ZtObOr 01:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, I can't see in the article anywhere why VX is not allowed! Of course it shouldn't be (since VX = V). Same with LC, and DM. This should be in here!

Would someone please take the time to clean this up? There should be a nice coherent explanation of what is allowed in roman numerals and what is not! And I should not have to search through the entire article to find it!

Rob (talk) 16:51, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Because n is an integer, as it stated in the second line. I reworded it. kwami (talk) 18:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I only learned Roman Numerals intuitively. But it seems that only integer powers of ten can be used to "decrement" a decimal digit. I.e. I,X,C and logically eventually M. They are used only to create 4's and 9's.--SportWagon (talk) 19:39, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Think of as Decimal Digits

Thinking about the confusion made me realize that I keep Roman Numerals straight by thinking of them as decimal digits (with never any zeroes, but all digits are actually "scaled" by the appropriate power of ten). But when I over-think about that, it seems it should be wrong. Were there historical reasons why Romans would have concepts of decimal digits even though they represented numerals with their own system? That is, would it be wrong to include in the article somewhere the notion that Roman Numerals are not completely distinct from decimal digits? That is, as far as I can tell, a correct Roman Numeral can always be split into its non-zero decimal digits. I.e. XLV splits into "XL" for "40" ("4"), and "V" for "5". The incorrect "VL" would not divide that way. Perhaps "XLIX" versus the incorrect "IL" is an even more pointed example. ("Can we find a citation for that?"). MMVIX is still just plain sloppy. ("VL", in contrast, is at least creative). --SportWagon (talk) 20:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The spoken language was decimal. It makes sense that if you say "two hundreds and thirty (and) five", you would write CC + XXX + V. Also, in speech the rule is "five and forty" (as in German) or "forty five" (as in English), so maybe writing "VL" would have been confused with 55. 9, on the other hand, was just "nine", and there was no "one and ten" for 11, so IX and XI do not have that problem. kwami (talk) 21:50, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the current article does imply Romans counted in decimal. For people who get confused, it seems it could be suggested that any valid Roman numeral must use zero or one combination from each of the lines of the table at the end of the Symbols section (written from left to right, lower lines of table first). But that notion could be introduced in at least two places. and there are already notes about duplication in the article, so I just offer the thought here for now.--SportWagon (talk) 22:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Zero? There is no zero. kwami (talk) 23:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Either you jest, or I didn't explain correctly. Take the table I indicate. From the bottom, go up to the first line with values small enough for the number in question. Select the appropriate value from that line. (This will be the first "digit" of your number, suitably scaled). Then go up to successive lines. If the particular digit is zero, then you pick zero combinations from that line, otherwise you must pick exactly one--the one corresponding to the digit in question--and append it to the numeral you are creating. You keep doing that until you get to the top of the table. Thus my "zero or one". The table defines the combinations which can occur in valid (modern) Roman Numerals; it is more restrictive than more general rules would imply.--SportWagon (talk) 00:18, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that's suitably explained now. kwami (talk) 08:21, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Definitely Not Decimal? Not.

A revision comment states that the Roman Numeral system is definitely not decimal. Simple inspection would seem to say that the system is decimal (based on powers of 10). The basic symbols all represent either powers of ten, or five times a power of ten. A Roman Numeral can be visualized as its decimal digits, and omitted zero placeholders (which are unnecessary because the magnitude is explicitly indicated by the choice of symbols). It's not like the symbols represent dozens and gross, or other truly non-decimal quantities. True one might be able to construct restrictive definitions of "decimal system" which would exclude Roman Numerals, but that wouldn't seem to qualify as "definitely". Given the obviously decimal nature of the system, I don't see why one would need an explicit source for using the word, especially in one of the deletions.--SportWagon (talk) 18:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Attempting to find web citations found this unfortunate garbage where, in the middle of the page, they seem to encourage very young readers to do things like VL. [1]--SportWagon (talk) 18:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Here's someone who agrees with the "decimal" concept.[2]--SportWagon (talk) 18:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

web search does indicate most people contrast "Roman Numerals" to "decimal", however. That is, when they say "decimal" they mean more than what we mean by "decimal".--SportWagon (talk) 18:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Another programmer who agrees with much of what we say. [3].--SportWagon (talk) 18:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

A "Math Forum" (not forum in that sense...)[4]. Contains further references.--SportWagon (talk) 18:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I was the one deleting the "decimal" remark: thanks for your comments. I must admit that I have not yet checked the links you give, but if Wikipedia has to be consistent as a whole, this article must agree with Decimal (and with Decimal representation). In those articles, and for what I know in the current use of the word (when talking about numeration systems), a decimal numeration system is before anything else a positional system, that is, one in which each digits gets a meaning depending on where it is in the representation of a number. So in "13" the digit "3" denotes three units, while in "31" it denotes three "tens", and so on. So merely the fact that some of the symbols used in Roman numerals denote powers of ten is not sufficient to qualify it as "decimal". Thanks, [[::User:Goochelaar|Goochelaar]] ([[::User talk:Goochelaar|talk]]) 18:59, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll leave it to kwami to choose some appropriate compromises. It seems like the word we want might have disappeared from the English language as "decimal" has taken on extra implications. Ignoring pedantic interpretations of "decimal", the now omitted paragraph following the table should simplify readers' thinking. (And true, one can just as easily say our attempted use of "decimal" is the pedantic one...)--SportWagon (talk) 19:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Egyptian numerals and Chinese numerals are examples of decimal systems which are certainly not positional because they use different symbols for every power of ten. — Joe Kress (talk) 19:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Declaring that decimal must imply positional seems pedantic because it insists one cannot understand a broader definition of a term in different contexts. However, the way you used "decimal" can also be considered pedantic because it would appear that "the decimal system" and "decimal numbers", even just "decimal" are commonly understood to imply the currently widespread positional system. That is it requires the reader to not make common assumptions. I will keep out of the editing for now.--SportWagon (talk) 20:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

"Decimal" means base 10, just as "binary" means base 2. That's all it means. We speak of languages as having decimal, vigessimal, etc. systems, but spoken languages are neither positional nor do they have a zero. Other than the auxiliary base 5 (presumably due to the limits of visual processing of iterated symbols), Roman numerals are analogous to the decimal numbering system of the Latin language. If our decimal article is wrong, then it needs to be corrected. The intro to this article clearly states that Roman numerals are decimal but not positional. Though a check with a dictionary is all that should be needed, I added a ref from Ifrah. As far as compromising with people who do not understand the concepts involved, that would be like stating that whales are fish as a compromise with people don't know the difference. kwami (talk) 21:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Kwamigami, thanks for your good work on this article, but I must disagree. First of all, the reference you give uses the words "a decimal system in which the number 5 is an auxiliary base" not about Roman numerals, but about a previous, archaic, conjectural numbering system an hypothetical herdsman might have developed in order to tally his animals; in fact, it follows "(and the numbers 2 and 5 are alternating bases)". Second, we might as well say that it is a "quinary", or base 5, system. Third, even if we find and agree on a source that describes Roman numerals as decimal under a broader definition of "decimal", we should immediately modify Decimal and Decimal representation (we have to be able to link the word "decimal" in this article to one of those articles).

You are right about languages, but we are not covering Latin language here; only this numeration system as used then and now in several countries with several different languages (in fact, nowhere is told anything about the Latin names for composite numbers, that is, different from 1, 5, 10 etc.).

As this is an encyclopedia, we are forced to be careful about the meaning we attribute to the words we use (even when this looks like pedantry). [[::User:Goochelaar|Goochelaar]] ([[::User talk:Goochelaar|talk]]) 23:45, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

It is nothing close to being a base 5 system. 25, 125, 625 etc. do not fall out as being simple representations the way C and M, and larger powers of ten do. The use of base 5 is merely a means of shortening what are conceptually decimal digits.--SportWagon (talk) 23:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Ifrah was speculating on the origins of the system, but what he ended up with was a decimal system "exactly the same as in the Roman system". As for language, my point was that if decimal means base 10 when describing numeral systems in language, it means base 10 when describing numeral systems in writing. I've seen no reason to believe that the word "decimal" changes definition depending on which medium we're discussing. SportWagon is right. There is no *VVV for 15, or *LLLL for 200, which is what Ifrah meant by 5 being "auxiliary". Roman numerals are base 10, therefore decimal. kwami (talk) 00:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

There are two main definitions. The historically primary definition deals with fractions, as decim means a tenth, but since at least 1684 the phrase "decimal fraction" has been used to disambiguate. Roman numerals are not decimal in this sense, since the fractions were duodecimal. But no-one uses Roman fractions anymore; for nearly everyone, we're talking about the non-fractional part. The second definition, per the OED, is "decimal numeration, the numerical system generally prevalent in all ages, of which 10 forms the basis; i.e. in which the units have distinct names up to 10, and the higher numbers are expressed by multiples or powers of 10 with the units added as required." There is ambiguity with decimal referring to decimal point & decimal places, etc., but the intro is clear enough for the reader to follow.

To be precise, Ifrah says that "the successive order of magnitude [used by the hypothetical herdsman] are exactly the same as in Roman system", not the system itself about which he only says that "the graphical forms for the figures ... are closely comparable with those in the archaic Roman and Etruscan systems". More importantly, the paragraph

The number system of the Latin language was decimal. That is, one said "one thousand and two hundreds and thirty [and] four". When writing a Roman number, the thousands, hundreds, tens, and units in the chart above are strung together the way they are spoken: M (one thousand) + CC (two hundreds) + XXX (thirty) + IV (four), for MCCXXXIV. Thus eleven is XI, 32 is XXXII, and 45 is XLV. Note that the subtractive principle is not extended beyond the chart, and *VL is not used for 45, as it does not correspond to the spoken language.

cannot stay as it is. Of course, in Latin one did not say "one thousand etc."; if anything "mille etc." Moreover, we cannot bring Latin language into this, because it would immediately contradict what is being said: "eighteen" is in Latin "duodeviginti", that is, "two-from-twenty", which would suggest such an expression as *IIXX, and similarly for 19, 28, 29 and so on. In order to find a solution acceptable to everybody, I suggest rewriting the former along the lines of

A practical way to write a Roman number is to consider it as if it were written in the modern decimal number system, and string together separately the thousands, hundreds, tens, and units as given in the chart above. So, for instance, 1234 may be thought of as "one thousand and two hundreds and thirty [and] four", obtaining M (one thousand) + CC (two hundreds) + XXX (thirty) + IV (four), for MCCXXXIV. Thus eleven is XI, 32 is XXXII, and 45 is XLV. Note that the subtractive principle is not extended beyond the chart, and *VL is not used for 45.

Would this be acceptable? (The problem would still remain to make this article and those on decimal notation not contradict each other.) [[::User:Goochelaar|Goochelaar]] ([[::User talk:Goochelaar|talk]]) 01:11, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's better. I'd forgotten about duodeviginti. I'll go ahead and change it. kwami (talk) 02:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The new paragraph is about what I thought could be asserted. The advice also helps for reading Roman Numerals. Why not say "numeral" rather than "number"? When you begin to move towards insisting that decimal comes from "tenth" rather than "ten", you also start to call some explanations of the term "decimal system" into question. Strange, web searches for "decemal" find first references to "decemal point". Oh well. Would some remaining uses of the term "decimal" in this page be better changed to references to "powers of 10", or possibly "base 10"?--SportWagon (talk) 03:21, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

We could probably come up with different wording, but I don't see the point. Decimālis means 'pertaining to decima, which means 'tenth' or 'tithe'. The earliest usage I can find is for writing fractions x.xxx rather than xx/xxx. However, that is only one use out of several, and when people speak of decimal numeration, it has nothing to do with fractions, just as it has nothing to do with tithing. —kwami (talk) 04:11, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

XCIX vs. IC

The section is a fine explanation of a set of sensible if arbitrary restrictions on "cutting short" roman numerals. However, I disagree with its claim that this is "the modern way" to do it or that it has more claim to ubiquity than the other variants. 83.119.119.123 (talk) 21:21, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:romannumeral up for deletion

Template:Romannumeral {{romannumeral}} has been sent to WP:TFD 76.66.196.218 (talk) 07:49, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Double subtraction?

Somebody I know is "XXIIX" according to his Facebook status today, using "IIX" to mean 8. It's always been my understanding that a given instance of a symbol can only be subtracted from once. Is he just plain wrong, or was such double subtraction once deemed valid? On a quick look through the article, there doesn't seem to be any comment on it. -- Smjg (talk) 12:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

You only subtract with one numeral (Always keeping it as simple as possible), and it's always the second to last numeral (the numeral that's smaller than the last one in the sequence), so in this case it's VIII for 8, not IIX) Nizzemancer (talk) 06:30, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Dating Roman Numerals

It seems to me (and I would be grateful for comment) that this article suffers from assuming that the Roman system of numerals were invariant throughout the life of the Roman Empire and also that the Roman Catholic church maintained these same methods after the demise of Rome.

As I understand it, research at Housesteads suggests that such assumptions are invalid for the language, never mind counting, and that the average Legionaire spoke a languege wildly different (not a mere dialect of Latin) from that subsequently used by the Church.

My point is that asertions as to methods of counting must be associated with a date to which they apply, or a period over which they are believed to have been in use. With over a thousand years of Empire, changes are to be expected.

Clearly in a system of written numerals which did not employ a zero as a device for maintaining the position of other digits, some mechanical system which avoids this grave shortcoming is essential in support of written records, but what were they uing in 750BC?

Dave

Drg40 (talk) 17:40, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The Roman numerals: IIII vs IV section

It troubles me that all the references in this section are from the late 14th century and beyond. Don't we have any authentic evidence from the time of the Roman empire? I'm sure you'd find lots of errors and incosistancies if you studied 10th Century Old English by looking at its use by the Portuguese in the 20th! ~~ Dr Dec (Talk) ~~ 17:13, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Zero

The article says they used nulla for zero. Unary numeral system says they used nullae and sloppily translates this as nothing. Wouldn't it be nulli, nullae or nulla according to the gender of what was counted?--87.162.24.252 (talk) 02:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I've only seen nulla or nullae used as a number for the first entry in a table of epacts, with all other entries being Roman numerals. Cyclus Decemnovennalis Dionysii is an example of this usage. Early medieval authors used nulla in this situation, while later medieval authors used nullae. I've never seen nulli used in this situation. Translations into English of works by medieval authors containing such a table replace nulla or nullae by "zero" or "0" and replace the Roman numerals by the appropriate Arabic numeral. — Joe Kress (talk) 08:35, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The article says: "About 725, Bede or one of his colleagues used the letter N, the initial of nulla, in a table of epacts, all written in Roman numerals." Do you have a reference? User: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Bussinchen —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bussinchen (talk • contribs) 15:55, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

It is in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Vol. 123C: Opera Didascalica. Ed. C.W. Jones. — Joe Kress (talk) 16:26, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

New usage needed under "Modern usage?"

The Modern usage section mentions using Roman numerals to denote monarchs and Popes, but it can also be used in regular family lines. For example, Harrison Greeley -> Harrison Greeley, Jr. -> Harrison Greeley III -> Harrison Greeley IV, and so on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.133.210.230 (talk) 02:11, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I've added a section to Modern Usage about how the BBC uses Roman numerals for copyright dates. I wrote the BBC guidelines on copyright dates in 1990 and researched the whole field of Roman numerals in order to come up with a system that would be clear and last for a few hundred years. It all arose from a BBC design manual being published that gave the example year as "©BBC MCMLXXXX" when I believed it should be "©BBC MCMXC". The BBC did use normal numerals in the 1970s but found that people complained too much about the number of repeats or the age of the programmes. People could just read the copyright date too easily! I didn't put this in the article as I have no references to prove it - it's just the BBC legend. GrahamPadruig (talk) 00:00, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

It's still just a BBC legend, in spite of the claimed sources added. I've moved what we know up into the bulleted list. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:32, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

It seems the BBC would like to abolish many things, and when they make an effort, all there is to show for it, are all the complaints.--82.134.28.194 (talk) 11:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I really don't know whether this is the place to mention this or not - apologies if it isn't - but the reference to Jupiter's moon states "currently" 63. Surely this should be qualified by some date or other as more moons might well be discovered in due course. 92.30.123.182 (talk) 18:01, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Need a new clock picture

The photo used to illustrate the calendars and clocks section is a poor choice, being an idiosyncratic 24-hour analog face (with a zero, even!). The numerals are not positioned the way the text describes. Spark240 (talk) 00:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I added a more typical clockface (and left the other one too) Modest Genius ^talk 17:29, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

help

explain why the roman system is not a place value system? and what are the diadvantages of the Roamn system —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.151.192.158 (talk) 21:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Archaic Numerals

I've seen the numeral "XIIX". What does this mean? AmericanLeMans (talk) 17:47, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

18 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.47.121.27 (talk) 02:37, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Added footnote references for use of letter "j" to replace terminal letter "i"

I was reading this article and noticed the (unreferenced) mention of the use of a letter j to replace a terminal letter i, especially for medical prescriptions, a practice I'd never heard of. Since there were no citations for this information, I decided to research it on-line for myself. In my opinion, most of the more recent sites that mention this practice appear to be simple "echoes" of this Wikipedia article and, therefore, would be unsuitable as citable references. When I limited my searches to much older texts (e.g., Google Books), I found multiple instances describing this practice. From those, I've selected two, which I hope are sufficient. Bgpaulus (talk) 18:55, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I have seen this in 15th-16th century works, but I need to dig up citations.Dogface (talk) 05:29, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Symbols not visible on Firefox

In the section "Alternate Forms," non-ascii-character symbols come through as weird tiny numbers in boxes (21/80 in a box), rather than as what they're supposed to be (e.g. a lemniscate). This may be a problem with my version of Firefox, but others probably have the problem too.

"Sometimes CIƆ was reduced to a lemniscate symbol (ↀ) for denoting 1,000. John Wallis is often credited for introducing this symbol to represent infinity (∞), and one conjecture is that he based it on this usage, since 1,000 was hyperbolically used to represent very large numbers. Similarly, 5,000 (IƆƆ) was reduced to ↁ; and 10,000 (CCIƆƆ) was reduced to ↂ."

128.103.135.114 (talk) 20:03, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Re-Ordering?

Seems that this page could use some reordering. Perhaps origins first (though it would equally be ok to leave symbols first, for quick perusal/explanation). The subrtractive principle needs to be in with the Symbols section, since the principle is mentioned well before the principle itself is explained. Perhaps Zero should be before symbols or after fractions? After the above, then IIII and IV, then Modern Usage and Clock Faces (or clock faces then modern usage, whichever fits well). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.145.251.34 (talk) 18:18, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I concur with the anon comment. I am a casual but not-infrequent visitor to this page and find it clumsy to navigate.--Cruickshanks (talk) 01:40, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

IC is possible

In Ancient Rome, writing numbers in the form IC for 99 instead of XCIX was allowed. Similarly, 999 could be written as IM. This is not mentioned in the article. 68.93.91.144 (talk) 23:19, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

If you would provide a reliable source for this, it might be included in the article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:29, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm... My Latin teacher said that, and there are probably classical documents somewhere that have these numerals. I realize that she does not count as a source, but I might be able to find something. 68.93.91.144 (talk) 01:32, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Here is a link to an article from Wolfram MathWorld. Specifically, it says:

"It should also be noted that the Romans themselves never wrote M for 1000, but instead wrote (I) for , (I)(I) for , etc., and also occasionally wrote IM, IIM, etc. (Menninger 1992, p. 281; Cajori 1993, p. 32). " 68.93.91.144 (talk) 03:13, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

(I) versus M for thousand

I'm new to Wiki Talk, so please forgive me any formatting errors.

There is an inconsistency in the "Modern Roman numerals" table.

I ran all the numbers of that table through a "roman number to string" converter using the roman "digits" further on.

The table mixes M and (I) for thousand. Note: I'm using the digits in parenthesis to avoid Unicode conversion issues.

In essence, it comes down to these values in the table being inconsistent:

    6666, '(V)MDCLXVI'
    1666000, '(M)(D)(C)(L)(X)(V)(I)'
    3888000, '(M)(M)(M)(D)(C)(C)(C)(L)(X)(X)(X)(V)(I)(I)(I)'

With 6666, M is used for thousand. With 1666000 and 3888000, (I) are used for thousand.

That is inconsistent, so it should either be mentioned that the table is inconsistent, or the table should be made consistent by making a single choice the digit representing thousand: M or (I).

Roman "digits" used for conversion and testing:

   1000000, '(M)'
   9000000, '(C)(M)'
   500000, '(D)'
   400000, '(C)(D)'
   100000, '(C)'
   900000, '(X)(C)'
   50000, '(L)'
   40000, '(X)(L)'
   10000, '(X)'
   9000, '(I)(X)'
   5000, '(V)'
   4000, '(I)(V)'
   1000, 'M'
   900, 'CM'
   500, 'D'
   400, 'CD'
   100, 'C'
   90, 'XC'
   50, 'L'
   40, 'XL'
   10, 'X'
   9, 'IX'
   5, 'V'
   4, 'IV'
   1, 'I'

Jpluimers (talk) 11:39, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Use of 'Quotes' to make pluralizing 'I's, 'V's and 'X's more legible?

This might make the article more legible on first read. --ButterSoda (talk) 14:40, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You are correct that legibility is a bit of a problem (example "twenty Is, four Vs, and four Xs"), but an apostrophe is not the solution. Many people here (I'm one of them) hate incorrect usage of apostrophes, and we automatically change "in the 1990's" to the correct "in the 1900s". Johnuniq (talk) 03:32, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Buttersoda did not propose using apostrophes to form the plural, he proposed using quotes around each Roman numeral. — Joe Kress (talk) 09:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Ooops, I must have had apostrophes on my mind when I saw the OP. Sorry about my mistaken comment. Here is how some of the text might appear (original and proposal):

With IIII, the number of symbols on the clock totals twenty Is, four Vs, and four Xs

With IIII, the number of symbols on the clock totals twenty 'I's, four 'V's, and four 'X's

The single quotes do not look quite right to me, particularly when thinking about the consistency problems (one I and two 'I's). I don't think there is a good solution. I am tempted to investigate a template to set the font to something serifed for every instance on the page (e.g. wikitext might appear as {{rn|I}}s to produce Is), but that seems overly complex (and we would need help from WP:VPT to see if browser or other problems would be likely). Johnuniq (talk) 05:59, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Multiples by 100,000 | Nested multiplication

According to Mathworld there was an additional way of writing large numbers, that is by putting a box with no bottom around the number. This should be included in the article, as it shows how to write extremely large numbers with Roman numerals. image

In addition, the mentioned article tells of the Roman practice of using nested multiplications of 10. Thus, quoted, “The Romans sometimes used multiple parentheses to denote nested multiplications by 10, so (I) for 1,000, ((I)) for 10,000, (((I))) for 100,000, etc. (Cajori 1993, p. 33).”

CannedMan (talk) 17:55, 1 May 2011 (UTC) (fixed web link formatting —Coroboy (talk) 03:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC))

File:Westerkerk MDCXXX.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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