An interesting pen test in a Hebrew manuscript that has a mixture of Hebrew and Latin on the flyleaves (this is from the rear fly-leaf, which is actually the front fly-leaf since Hebrew is written right-to-left):
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Cod.Hebr.287
Presumably this is one scribe, right? There's considerable variation there, particularly on the last line.
I'm thinking of You are not allowed to view links.
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Yes, this is one scribe.
It's very common on flyleaves for scribes to write the same thing multiple times. Sometimes they cover 1/3 of a page with the same phrase.
Professional scribes often could write something multiple times with little variation—some of the medieval bookhands are remarkably consistent—but the average writer (teacher, student, non-scribe professional) were often not that skilled and some people simply don't have the muscle memory and fine-motor coordination to write each letter the same. But even when handwriting is variable, you can usually spot overall patterns as long as there is enough text.
I think the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is probably all in the same hand. There are a few places where it's hard to tell if the variation is deliberate or simply a lack of skill.
Some shapes are harder to write than others (especially with a quill). It's difficult even for skilled scribes to draw multiple loops that match each other like the flourishes on the P shapes.
The handwriting f57v is tidy and careful (I actually think of this as "the careful scribe" in my head), and it's not bad, but it's not super skilled. It would never measure up to the best scribes in terms of quality and consistency, but it's better than some of the manuscripts copied by professors or students for their own use.
One note about the pen test in the first post...
If you read it right to left, you might notice that the last letter, the one that looks like a "9", is drawn in the Arabic style, not in the Latin style. In Arabic the loops tend to be smaller, longer and more horizontal than the way it was written in Latin texts.
In Arabic, it is a terminal letter. In Latin texts, it is an abbreviation symbol.
The y chars in the VMS are more similar to Latin versions—bigger loops, more vertical stems (and left to right rather than the other way around).
The third shape in the pen test example has a shape similarity to VMS s if you interpret it from left-to-right (which is questionable, but we're just talking about shapes now, not meaning).
Note how the top loop varies considerably and sometimes cuts down through the main crossbar.
This kind of variation is actually quite common. It occurs with the tails on both c-shapes and r-shapes, and the same kind of variation occurs with VMS r and s (something that can't be seen in transcripts).
MOST of the time, the variation was not meaningful. But I have noticed that maybe 5% or 10% of scribes will make a distinction between a tail that has a hook on the end and a rounded tail.
In Latin texts, the tail is an abbreviation symbol (most of the time). It usually stands for er/re/ir/ri and their homonyms. In the small number of scribes who deliberately vary the shape of the tails, they sometimes differentiated WHICH abbreviation it represented but... most of the time the tail shape was variable and was understood by context not by shape. In other words, the shape didn't matter, only the fact that it was there.
In non-Latin scripts this shape is not necessarily a tail, sometimes the whole thing is a letter, but it depends on the language. In Latin, it is usually an abbreviation tail (not an embellishment).
More about the pen test, and one of the reasons it caught my attention...
I can't read Arabic, except for a few simple words, and I don't know the Arabic language (except for some of the words that are similar to Hebrew), but I believe the dot by the final letter (on the left) is to distinguish Fa from Kaf.
But oddly, the letter that vaguely resembles a 3 isn't an Arabic letter (at least I'm pretty sure it isn't). I notice he simplified it in the 4th and 6th examples so it almost looks like Hebrew Beth (B) or the medial form of Kaph, but Beth and Kaph don't usually have an extra indentation, so I'm not sure what that is.
The third letter (from the right), might be Waw or an oddly written Resh. It vaguely resembles a mirrored Latin "r".
Oddly the first and second letters are more similar to some of the old Indic scripts. Three was not usually written this way in the middle eastern languages, more often they used the runic-style 3 with the straight stem. But... eastern Arabic and western Indic scripts sometimes used this style of 3 (the one that the west eventually adapted).
But... it's probably not a number, more likely a letter.
Usually I can work out the characters even if it is a language that I don't know very well, but this one had me scratching my head. I couldn't tell if it was a combination of Arabic and Hebrew or Indic and Arabic or something else. It was probably added in the 15th century.
It might be necessary to know Middle Eastern languages to sort it out.