MCMXXXIXMCMXLV. Can anyone translate this into a number for me? It is part of an inscription on the cenotaph in London.

1939(-)1945

I'm assuming the hyphen didn't get used for this? a cenotaph for WWII?

is there only one cenotaph in London? so it is The Cenotaph?

Dear Dody: you gave me a headache, or rather, the problem did. I don't see any way to make
sense out of that, unless some special rules were employed. Here is a URL to the rules:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6946/romannumerals.html

PS. Dear etaoin: Nice work.

Bill: thanks! I always loved Roman numerals...
and thanks for a great link, I didn't know about some of those higher numbers.

In school I was told that there were no spaces between words in Latin text, which is one reason translating it is so long a process. Perusing a few facsimiles of early documents, "no spaces" appears to be accurate.
Who invented placing a small space between words? And why isn't that person canonized, at least, or worshiped or ever even mentioned?

Thanks for the link, wwh, it'll be a big help doing crosswords.

Bill:

The reason no one has been given credit is because no one knows who this person was. Early printing presses had provisions for spaces between words thanks to Maynard and Noel Spaes, who worked for Johannes Gutenburg. Maynard insisted that a wide space between words was appropriate because then there wasn't any doubt that there actually was a space. Noel believed that a small space was preferable because in the long run it ended up using less paper, which was a very valuable commodity.

So in typographical circles there has been considerable debate over the centuries about the merits of the M. Spaes argument versus the N. Spaes argument.

TEd, who can italic like it is, though some consider him a pica for making such a bad pun. Actually, we've been through this series of puns this past twelvemonth, so I won't go any further.

There's no spes for you, TEd.

The Cenotaph indeed