: Re: What is the purpose of using Roman numerals as page numbers? I'm in the process of writing a dissertation for my university degree. I have looked at examples online where people have used Roman

@Connie138

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Answer on the purpose:

"Front-matter pages are traditionally numbered in lower-case Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.), which prevents renumbering the
remainder of a book when front-matter content is added at the last
moment, such as a dedication page or additional acknowledgments."

(source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_design)

"The front matter of a book is paginated with lowercase roman numerals (see 1.4). This traditional practice prevents renumbering the
remainder of a book when, for example, a dedication page or additional
acknowledgments are added at the last moment."

(Source: The Chicago manual of style. 17th ed. London;Chicago;: The University of Chicago Press; 2017.)

My opinion: the emphasis is on 'traditional'; it is an old (outdated, but not by usage) practice which makes no sense anymore, when works are published as PDFs using word or latex, where page numbering is automatically adjusted after including new front matter. -- I never used it in my theses so far and I will try my best to avoid it in the future; because so far I found it only confusing and not helpful, rather detrimental when dealing with non-fiction. (I often asked myself: if intro or preface are not numbered, are they not important for the work? and often, the work starting from '1' makes only good sense when the preface or intro from III-XI e.g. is read/included. so why exclude it from the main body of work/text by using roman numerals? and why lowercase numerals? makes it even worse. -- I only see reason in using roman numerals for the pages by the publisher, which are not part of the author's actually work. but if I put contents and a quote and a preface there, carrying important 'intro-info' for my work, then I want them part of the work, thus using Arabic numerals.)

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