The counting of Rome is a difficult matter

[desperance]

A friend of mine is having a party to celebrate her 49.5ishness. Me being me, as I walked home tonight (from a concert performance of My Fair Lady, since you ask) I was pondering: and I realised in mid-ponder that I didn't know whether the true Roman form would be XLIX or the neater and therefore less likely IL. Which being true, if the Romans had invented the decimal point, would they have said XLIX.V, or would it have been .VL? Or perhaps (.V)L, to save confusion...?

In other news, there has to have been a source for the Nile. Somebody must have realised first that the internet was invented for talking about cats.