Roman numerals still show up everywhere: clock faces, book chapters, film credits, and the names of kings and queens. They look mysterious, but they follow a small set of rules, and once you know the seven symbols, you can read any of them.
The seven symbols are I for 1, V for 5, X for 10, L for 50, C for 100, D for 500, and M for 1,000. Most Roman numerals are built by adding symbols together from largest to smallest. So VIII is 5 + 1 + 1 + 1, which is 8, and XVI is 10 + 5 + 1, which is 16. Reading from left to right and adding as you go will get you through most of the numbers you meet in everyday life.
The tricky part is subtraction. When a smaller symbol comes before a larger one, you subtract it instead of adding it. IV is not 6; it is 5 minus 1, which is 4. IX is 9, XL is 40, and XC is 90. This rule only ever uses one smaller symbol before a larger one, and it only applies to specific pairs: I before V or X, X before L or C, and C before D or M. You will never see IL for 49; the correct form is XLIX, which is 40 + 9.
Writing a number in Roman numerals means working from the largest value down. Take 2026. That is 2,000 (MM) + 20 (XX) + 6 (VI), giving MMXXVI. Take 1999: 1,000 (M) + 900 (CM) + 90 (XC) + 9 (IX), giving MCMXCIX. Breaking the number into thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones first makes the conversion far less error-prone than trying to do it in one step.
One habit worth keeping is to write the number out in words as well when it matters. On formal documents, invitations, and inscriptions, a mistake in Roman numerals is easy to make and hard to spot, because the result still looks plausible. If you need to double-check a conversion, a free numbers-to-words converter can confirm the English wording in seconds: try WordsForNumbers at https://wordsfornumbers.com/ and compare the result with your Roman numeral before you carve it, print it, or publish it.
A final tip: read Roman numerals aloud as you write them. Saying "one thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine" while writing MCMXCIX forces you to check each group as you go, and it catches the subtraction pairs that silent reading misses. With a little practice, clock faces and chapter headings stop being puzzles and become ordinary reading.
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