Roman Numerals 101

I This letter is the most familiar and we use it unconsciously to number our chapters in books. It represents a number one.
II If we add two 'I's together it represents the number two.
III And three 'I''s represents the number three.
IIII Have you seen a number four represented in this way? If you look closely at the old clocks that use Roman numerals, this is exactly what you will see. It makes sense that if you add four 'I''s you'll count till the number four. However this can become cumbersome to represent the number two hundred and one using just two hundred and one 'I''s. So the Romans started using a newer letter for every fifth increment. This is the familiar letter 'V'.
IV You may, however, be more familiar with the 'IV' representation of the number four used in most chapter books. This is a way of representing one less than five. Because the lower value 'I' (one) is written before the higher value 'V' (five), it means take one from five.

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Updated: 2005/07/12