Roman numeral usage

> 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.

>
> Tim Partridge wrote:
>
> 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)?

The use of j instead of i in numeral-final position has not been used
anywhere for quite some time
The original (non-subtractive) form iiii is retained, however, in one and
only one context: many Roman numeral clocks enumerate 4 as iiii (but 9 as
ix). See http://members.aol.com/lolathrop/roman/iv.html
There have been some interesting psychological studies (references escape me
at the moment, but I could check if people are interested; it's a bit OT)
where users familiar with Roman numerals were asked to draw a Roman numeral
clock from memory, and they almost always represented 4 as iv even though
iiii is the more common form.

> > 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.

Could very well be; I'm not an expert in printing history. Obviously, we
want to know why people wouldn't just enumerate pages in one big series
starting with 1. But even so, the reason why two separate systems are used
is so each page has its own unique designation, and the Roman numerals are
thus pragmatic in this case. This general class of cases where the use of
Roman numerals is for utilitarian reasons also includes their use in some
dating systems and enumerating sub-sections of lists.

Stephen Chrisomalis
Department of Anthropology, McGill University
schris1@...