The Voynich Ninja

@ Emma:

Well if that's a pen problem, the problem must be in a certain impairment of the pen. Because there are plenty of gallows elsewhere in the folio, including same lines, which do not exhibit this behavior at all. But these occasional outbursts of saturation occur for many folios ahead. I think we should separate this from the very writing technique, to which I'd rather attribute the elusory "two-pass-ness" - something like JKP describes it. It's curious though that this does not negate hooks, which are still there. For some reason, the pen does not stop at the lowest point of i, it continues past the salient point, drawing the hook, and only then it appends the tail in the second stroke. I guess this might be the consequence of the quill being rotated about its axis, which occurs at the end of the hook.

But I disagree that we can establish reliably that words were written in two passes.

Yes, I agree with you. Two strokes do not automatically mean "two passes". Don't know if Nick maybe has more argument into that, but my own suspicion for passes has been based on this two-stroke behaviour. Basically, it's based on "why many n are written in two strokes while b is written in a single stroke". If this contradiction can be explained away by peculiarities of the writing technique (as we discussed above in the thread), then I think I can't see more argument for "two passes" at the moment.

EMMA. Your example can also be explained by the quality of parchment  (local irregularities, fibers).

The pen has a longitudinal section D, which divides the pen into two halves B and C. When writing, the clerk holds the pen at an angle of 60-70 to the parchment. When the pen moves down, the frictional force is less. When moving upwards (especially if the parchment has local irregularities), the resistance increases. Each of the halves of B and C can react differently. A flat - parallel shift B and C (view A) occurs, resulting in an increase in line thickness (lilac size) and increased ink flow.
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