Yes, the Roman numerals are very often used for months, with I standing for January, II for February, III for March, etc all the way to XII for December. It's the simple way to differentiate the day number from the month number and is still widely used in Europe. And, in the European fashion the date format is always day-month-year and is written with the slashes in between day/month/year. As for the annotations in the birth registers - they appear sometimes and are of different nature. Obviously, the most common is the date of death - symbolized by a small cross (+). The other one which is quite common is a marriage date (sometimes with the name of the bride/groom added as well). But, there are others that are even more interesting. Like for example, the extract dates - usually written on the margin in very, very small letters and preceded by letters 'ex' or 'eks' or nothing at all. Those are the dates when someone asked for a transcript of their birth certificate to present to different authorities. They are extremely interesting because one can guess for what purpose those transcripts were acquired just by looking at the dates - a marriage, an entrance to a school/university, a military draft, a job application, passport application, etc. And, thanks to them one can date some events in the life of a person which otherwise would have been undated. The birth registers - but only the original ones in the parishes, not the bishop's copies at the archdiocese archives - contain a wealth of information sometimes well beyond what those registers were meant to be. I found things like the letters of recommendations or of good moral standing issued to the parishioners seeking employment. Or, the notes about emigrations, and later about marriages and births of children in far away places sometimes (rarely!) with the foreign certificates attached. ella