ambrette, yet again

[Elliott A Moreton]

> 
> >ambrette, n. A style of cursive handwriting, formerly much used in
> >legal draughting because of its resistance to alteration.
> 
>    "And in the Gothic script which became common in Germany,
>     as well as the German script that developed from it....
>     To prevent falsification of a number, the last digit i
>     was always lengthened and written as a j."

But Roman numerals are mostly self-terminating!  Wouldn't the most 
pressing need be for something to prevent anything being added on at the 
*front*?  

Incidentally, I got the idea for this def from the very complicated
characters used for some digits in Japan in circumstances where the
ordinary characters (1 is "-", 2 is "=", three is three horizontal lines) 
would be too easily altered.

>     -- Karl Menninger, _Number Words and Number Symbols: A
>     Cultural History of Numbers_, page 281, chapter 9,
>     "Roman Numerals in Cursive Form"

Is this the psychiatrist of that name?  Sounds like an interesting book, 
anyway.

em