The Washington Post, January 9th, 1999
I enjoyed your Dec. 31 front-page article on how to write 1999 in Roman numerals. Your research was a little weak, however. The ironclad rule is you can only subtract I from V or X, X from L or C, and C from D or M. MIM won't fly. Your article quoted a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology asserting that the subtraction method of Roman numerical notation was popularized in this century. While I have the greatest respect for the staff at the institute, the subtraction principle became common practice centuries ago when clockmakers used it to compress Roman numerical n...
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