Romanettes--what are they?
Romanettes are the lower-case Roman numerals used frequently in legal writing and especially in legal drafting:
(i), (ii), (iii)
I disfavor them and said so in my book Better Legal Writing
. I say we have a perfectly good numbering system:
1, 2, 3
(1), (2), (3)
So why use Roman numerals and Romanettes?
What I didn't know is that Romanettes isn't a word. I exaggerate. It's not in standard dictionaries or Black's. Eugene Volokh blogged about it here:
But it's a good word, a useful one.
(i), (ii), (iii)
I disfavor them and said so in my book Better Legal Writing
. I say we have a perfectly good numbering system:1, 2, 3
(1), (2), (3)
So why use Roman numerals and Romanettes?
What I didn't know is that Romanettes isn't a word. I exaggerate. It's not in standard dictionaries or Black's. Eugene Volokh blogged about it here:
http://volokh.com/posts/1226638091.shtml
He quoted from a U.S. Supreme Court oral argument in which Chief Justice Roberts admits he'd never heard the word.But it's a good word, a useful one.
I agree. There's a reason we no longer use Roman numerals: they require arithmetic!
I am a bit surprised, though, that Chief Justice Roberts, with his many years of high-level appellate practice, has not heard of romanettes.
Perhaps only low-level practitioners call them romanettes!
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From personal experience, the use of romanettes has been "outcome determinative" to my cases on several occasions.
Wayne says:
Do tell.
I guess I'm curious. This numbering system would have lost you the case?
1.1(A)(1)(a)
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you wrote: So why use Roman numerals and Romanettes?
I know nothing about legal writing, but my answer is that they give you another level of numbering for use in embedded lists.
I.
II.
A.
B.
1.
2.
i.
ii.
a.
b.
When using arbitrary symbols (or worse: indenting, bold, italic, or some other pure visual form), it's too easy to lose track of where you are, both for the reader and the writer.
On the other hand, you only really need roman numerals of any type on lists with three or more layers.
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I like roman numerals - they are my enumerator of choice when I'm not using a new paragraph for the items, like (i) this or (ii) this. But if I wasn't used to them (and it therefore required "arithmetic"), I'm sure I wouldn't be so keen.
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