Been thinking a bit more about this business of using Roman numerals for dates & am wondering if there might not have been some misunderstanding between journalist Susan Mazur & the ‘spokesperson for the Department of English at Oxford’ who told her that it was something just not done outside of scholarly circles at Oxford & Cambridge. Maybe they had not understood that the question was about the use of old-fashioned typewriters – Oxbridge dons probably never used such distressingly new-fangled things themselves & the question was being answered in terms of dates written by hand.
Even today some people make a practice of using Roman numerals for dates – but lower case only & for months only eg 20.xii.2012. It is no mere affectation - it avoids confusion, ambiguity or misunderstandings – such as, for example, that which can arise in the use of 9/11
In my experience those who do this usually come from a science or mathematical background, & the practice is by no means confined to graduates of Oxford & Cambridge.
And I now notice that Peter Brookes, political cartoonist to The Times, also dates his cartoons in this manner.
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