Re: Mayan numerals

Stephen Chrisomalis recently said:

> 3) A related point: Roman numerals are used in dozens of countries by
> millions of individuals, and primarily by members of educated (middle and
> upper) classes. They not only represent tradition; they connote prestige.

Possibly because knowing Latin was prestigious, and Roman numerals by
association. Surely most of these countries had Latin used in them at some
point. (Either because the Romans were there or because Christian texts used
to be in Latin.)

We have stopped using the long i for a final i in the numerals in the UK.
Does that apply elsewhere? E.g. i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi VS j, ij, iij, iv, v,
vj? Does anyone still use the original form of four (iiii)?

> 4) We continue to use Roman numerals for one major pragmatic reason, which
> is to distinguish one set of enumerated things from another. For instance,
> prefatory material in a book is usually paginated in Roman numerals to
> distinguish it from the Hindu-Arabic paginated body of the text.

I thought this was partly a matter of convenience for the printer. The main
body of the text can be typeset with its own sequence of page numbers
without worrying how long the contents pages will be or the foreword and
other front matter.

Tim

--
Tim Partridge. Any opinions expressed are mine only and not those of my employer