Talk:Roman numerals

There is a mistake in the first image caption

In the caption of the first image on the page, it says "Roman numerals on stern of the ship Cutty Sark showing draught in feet." There should be a "The" before stern: "Roman numerals forward on the stern of Cutty Sark, showing draught in feet." Also, just "stern" of a ship is vague and could also be corrected to "Roman numerals forward of the rudder on Cutty Sark, showing draught in feet." 98.3.113.56 (talk) 00:00, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

(While adding "Missing Modern Usage" section, below.) The nomenclature of bits of ships is complex. Doubly so, and the province of the Internet Pedant, for shipping technologies that have been commercially extinct for well over a century. I can work out where you mean this is written on the ship, but what it's name in an era when steel bar or tube as a rudder pivot wasn't available ... I dread to think. These wooden rudders had to have a lower pivot point (so, needed a shirt, stiff extension from the keel) because their wooden (braced with wrought iron strips) rudder posts weren't stiff enough to take steerage forces with just an upper pivot. But what the hell to call such a structure ... I'd ask a Professor of Nautical Engineering I used to correspond with, but he only worked with steel and concrete constructions so probably wouldn't know the terms in the wooden world. AKarley (talk) 20:25, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Missing modern usage

In discussion of "modern" "usage", it is perverse to exclude the use of Roman numerals (albeit, "butchered") in the output of modern computer languages like INTERCAL (reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERCAL#Syntax , but there are other INTERCAL documents scattered over the Web. And on Gopher. This is because it is a uniformly accessible format - equally inconvenient for all users (unless you happen to be an ancient Roman computer programmer ; which is convenient since it also means you're dead and unlikely to lord it over your digitally encumbered associates).

Is there a "template" which would drive the point home by, for example, only making the section visible on dates including, say, "IV-I" (ISO 8601, butchered, format). This would make it equally inconvenient for all users.

AKarley (talk) 20:25, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Roman numerals on Cyrillic typewriters

There is some tradition in Russian (possibly in other languages using the Cyrillic script) to represent Roman numerals using Cyrillic letters. The reason is that 1 usually was represented by pre-reform І on typewriters and that the Cyrillic letters П and Ш resemble Template:Rn and Template:Rn. While there is no letter that resembles Template:Rn accurately, У is close enough. For Template:Rn, the letter Х is a great representation. For the Cyrillic alphabet lacking something to represent Template:Rn, the smallest number not representable by this system (due to requiring Template:Rn) is Template:Rn (40).

I cannot find any source outlining this, but on the web, one can find instances of those usages. Just look for some of the higher values. In particular, those starting with three Х are never actual words in any language.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn
І	П	Ш	ІУ	У	УІ	УП	УШ	ІХ	Х

11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn
Х1	ХП	ХШ	Х1У	ХУ	ХУ1	ХУП	ХУШ	Х1Х	ХХ

21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn
ХХ1	ХХП	ХХШ	ХХ1У	ХХУ	ХХУ1	ХХУП	ХХУШ	ХХ1Х	ХХХ

31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40
Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn	Template:Rn
ХХХ1	ХХХП	ХХХШ	ХХХ1У	ХХХУ	ХХХУ1	ХХХУП	ХХХУШ	ХХХ1Х	—

My edit was reversed because it was unsourced (which it was); and because it was “niche,” which is a mere opinion. I don’t think it is because the time span of typewriter use is significant. I cannot easily point to non-digitalized physical documents, but the German Wikipedia page has a few links to online uses. Anyone with even very basic understanding of the Russian language can easily verify the use of representing Roman numerals like this. Those examples are distinctly not about this topic. DerSpezialist (talk) 12:41, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

If you can't find a source, then it's difficult for anyone else to verify, and perhaps not noteworthy enough to include in an encyclopedia. Conversely, if it's noteworthy there's probably a source out there discussing the topic. See WP:V. –jacobolus (t) 18:29, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

I haven't looked at them (and don't read Russian), but the Russian wikipedia page Template:Slink cites:

• Березин, Борис Иванович. Школа машинописи. — М.: Легкая и пищевая промышленность, 1984. — С. 85. — 168 с.
• Озеран, Антонина Евгеньевна. Машинопись. — Минск: Вышэйшая школа, 1971. — С. 98. — 225 с. — ISBN 978-5-458-48020-8. Архивировано 25 мая 2023 года.

On this point. Maybe you can track down these sources and see what they say about this topic. –jacobolus (t) 19:22, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

The mobile page is returning a CSS error for every Roman numeral

On my Samsung S24 on Feb 22 at 6:39 PM MT, using the Google Search app, the mobile page for this Wikipedia article is not displaying any Roman numeral characters, and instead shows a CSS error. One example says "Page Template:Rn/styles.css has no content.I". All errors across the whole page are identical, except after the "." at the end a different Roman numeral is listed that the HTML trying to pull up from its styse sheet.Makes the page basically unreadable on a mobile phone, as the error messages are each in large red font every time they occur. 2604:3D09:6B82:D300:A0EA:9E26:E438:1DAA (talk) 01:43, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. It was more than mobile: the page was broken for everyone. I fixed it by a sort-of redirect at Template:No redirect. The style sheet was moved recently. Johnuniq (talk) 04:47, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Claims about subtraction writing being common since Roman antiquity

Here in this article as well as in elder discussions, there have been repeated claims that this writing had been normal since Ancient Rome or that they would need a proving example of "VIIII". When reading sources of the High Middle Ages, you probably won't find any usages of substraction. Look up the diplomata of Frederick Barbarossa, and you will find dozens of pure addition writings. https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_dd_f_i_2/index.htm#page/44/mode/1up Universal-Interessierter^de (talk (de)) 01:58, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Chrisomalis (2010) Numerical Notation: A Comparative History (p. 111 ff.) says: Template:Tqb –jacobolus (t) 04:47, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

According to the Sourcebook in the Mathematics of Medieval Europe and North Africa (), Template:Tqb –jacobolus (t) 09:11, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

David Eugene Smith (1926) says: Template:Tqb

Going onward from that, Smith points out that the form IX was very rare in the Middle Ages, but that subtractive notation was used for larger numbers (e.g. XCC for 190), and speculates that maybe IX was avoided for religious superstition because it was the initials of Jesus Christ. –jacobolus (t) 18:04, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

You seem to have some good references, it would propbably be best to fix the article which I suspect has accumulated a lot of false "wikipedia facts". Your referenced text also clearly states that subtractive "reduced the length of the numeral-phrases" and implies that is the reason it was used, it would be nice to add this sky-is-blue statement to the article with this reference. Spitzak (talk) 20:20, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, the article's text definitely misrepresents available scholarship. If anyone wants to put this right it would be appreciated. I don't feel like doing a careful literature survey right now. –jacobolus (t) 21:18, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Nulla dating

A recent addition asserts Template:Tq,[1] considerably earlier than we had. Template:Ping, do you have a source for this? It's also awkward in that 200 AD isn't fairly late in even the western Roman Empire, and because we go on to say Template:Tq which doesn't follow at all, so for the time being I'll revert it, until we've got a WP:RS and know how we want to rephrase this part. NebY (talk) 19:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC)