Arabic numerals in its entry in the "Oxford English Dictionary", which helps to distinguish it from "Arabic numerals" as the Eastern Arabic numerals. Alternative names are Western Arabic numerals, Western numerals, Hindu–Arabic numerals and Unicode calls them digits. The decimal Hindu–Arabic numeral system with zero was developed in India by around AD 700. The development was gradual, spanning several centuries, but the decisive step was probably provided by Brahmagupta's formulation of zero as a number in AD 628. The system was revolutionary by including zero in positional notation, thereby limiting the number of individual digits to ten. It is considered an important
Roman numerals Capital or small capital Roman numerals are widely used in Romance languages to denote , e.g. the French ' and the Spanish ' mean "18th century". Slavic languages in and adjacent to Russia similarly favour Roman numerals (). On the other hand, in Slavic languages in Central Europe, like most Germanic languages, one writes "18." (with a period) before the local word for "century". Mixed Roman and Arabic numerals are sometimes used in numeric representations of dates (especially in formal letters and official documents, but also on tombstones). The is written in Roman numerals, while the day is in Arabic