(10-10-2025, 07:23 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've noticed something possibly interesting on the page f114r.
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There is some text of few words which looks like inserted between lines:
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It feels weird to me. If it is a continuation of the previous line then it should start at the left edge but instead it is aligned to the right edge.
It may feel like it was inserted later but I wouldn't say so. Notice that the scribe does a weird thing and goes up with the previous line to make a place for it. I made a sketch of it for you.
So how do you think, what happened here? Was the scribe copying text from another source and realized that he lacks place? But why he lacked space? He was writing from top to bottom afterall so he should have space in the bottom.
Scribes were only human, after all. The uneven lines of text might indicate that the writer had to take a break, for example, to use the toilet. Under pressure or due to sudden urgency, their hand could stray from the line. Upon returning, they would notice the mistake and carefully fill in the missing parts. Another explanation could be fatigue – long hours of tedious calligraphy might cause the hand to slip off the line. After a short rest or the next day, the scribe would return to the text and correct any inaccuracies.
Anyway, this makes not sense at all with gibberish text. Why should the scriba insert that weird line if nobody was gonna understand it?
(11-10-2025, 03:46 PM)quimqu Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Anyway, this makes not sense at all with gibberish text. Why should the scriba insert that weird line if nobody was gonna understand it?
As pointed out by Rene, you're assuming the scribe could read Voynichese, and not just blindly copying text he did not understand.
(11-10-2025, 09:47 AM)mariaassisf Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Could It be that the stars were drawn before writing the text? And in order to avoid an horizontal disalignment between the star and the paragraph start the scribe would try to squeeze in the remaining text.
But the stars and parags
are mis-aligned in some of the Stars pages.
Here are my notes about the parag breaks and stars of page f116r, for example. A "perfect parag" is a paragraph where all the hints check out: the previous line is short, the head line has puffs (
p/
f gallows), the other lines have no puffs, the last line is short, and there is a star nearby that can be assigned to the first line.
# Star S07, assigned to line 18, is smaller than usual, with stubbier
# rays.
#
# There are obvious parag breaks before lines 1, 4, 7, 10, and assigning
# stars S01-S04 to them will split lines 1-9 into 3 perfect parags.
# Otherwise the splitting of the remaining SPS lines on this page, lines
# 11-30, is somewhat uncertain.
#
# There are six stars to be assigned, so we need six parag breaks.
# However, there are only two definitely short lines: 14 and 17.
# Thus we will assume that lines 15 and 18 are parag heads.
#
# There are four more lines that end 1-2 glyphs short of the right
# rail: 16, 20, 24, and 26, hinting that lines 17, 21, 25, and 27 may
# be heads. There are also hints for lines 19 and 20: they have puffs,
# and line 20 has a slightly wider linegap at right. Line 27 has a
# puff and a significantly wider linegap, so we may assume it is a
# parag head, too.
#
# Line 19 has a puff initial, so it would normally be a strong
# candidate to parag head. However, that glyph is suspicious; see
# below. So it is best to leave line 19 as "hinted" only.
#
# The vertical alignment (vpos) of stars S05-S10 is with lines 12.5,
# 15, 18, 21, 24, and 26. The situation is thus:
#
# 111111111122222222223 Line number.
# 012345678901234567890 Line number.
# *--*-*--*--*--*-*---- Stars S04-S10.
# H----H-+H+++---+-H--- assumed (H) and hinted (+) parag heads
#
# It seems likely that stars S09 and S10 are just one line off, and
# they should be assigned to lines 25 and 27. That given, the most
# likely choice for the other breaks seems to be to assume a parag
# break before one of the lines 11-14, with star S05, assume a parag
# break before line 21, with star S08, and assign S06 and S07 to their
# current positions. Lines 17, 19, and 20 should not be heads, in spite
# of their hints. That is what was done in this file.
#
# The puff initial of line 19 is actually a weirdo: an @e with a @p
# gallows growing from its top. It seems to have been retraced.
# Maybe it was not intended to be a puff at all.
All the best, --jorge
I think that the first characters of each line were written first. Look here, in red, there is a small space between the first and the second character. In green, there is an evident ink density difference between the first and second character. This makes me think that a first character column was written before the whole lines.[
attachment=11642]
Regarding misaligned stars - I don't have time to finish my star analysis post right now but I am fairly certain that - like the nymphs and plants, all stars in the VM were drawn by the same person. Meaning probably not by the scribe writing the text. This may seem odd but I believe the stars were also drawn first like the rest of the illustrations, and the text was added later.
Yeah, the writing at the edge of lines is sometimes odd, researchers have long noticed it. Coupled with the fact that they are seemingly written in the same hand, to me seems like evidence that the scribe was not just blindly copying text one word at a time, but wrote those glyphs intentionally ahead of time or after the fact.
Even if the scribe were copying from someother source with LAAFU margins, I dont think we should be seeing detached (or attached) glyphs at line edges with this odd spacing so many times.
But I'd be glad to hear someone else's opinion on the matter. Maybe it was commonplace to 'capitulize' or mark the start of paragraphs/lines before copying the bulk of text, on unruled vellum
(11-10-2025, 08:41 PM)quimqu Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think that the first characters of each line were written first. Look here, in red, there is a small space between the first and the second character.
There are several issues involved here...
Again, the distribution of
characters in line-start position is determined by the distribution of
words in line-start position. So studying the latter may be more informative than studying the former.
As remarked before, one consequence of the trivial line-breaking algorithm is that the line-initial words tend to be longer than average. I would bet that y and qo are more common at the start of longer words than of shorter ones. So this length bias should indirectly contribute to the enhanced frequency of y and q in line-initial positions. If it does note explain all the anomalies, what anomalies are left to explain?
Most of the time there is a clear difference between "narrow spaces" (assumed to separate characters of a word) and "wide spaces" (assumed to separate words). But the spaces have natural random variation and will generally stretch or shrink depending on the available space. Thus often one must guess the type of a space.
[
attachment=11649]
(And the decision that there are only
two types of space was unconsciously made by transcribers way back in the punched card era, because that is the rule in most European writing systems. But maybe the VMS Scribe also used half-wide spaces between the words of a compound, and extra-wide spaces between sentences, and ... In most European languages oblique pronouns are written either as separate words "say it to us" or joined to the verb "ditecelo"; but in Portuguese spelling they are joined with hyphens, "dize-no-lo". Are there "hyphen spaces" in Voynichese?)
Quote: In green, there is an evident ink density difference between the first and second character. This makes me think that a first character column was written before the whole lines.
Watch out -- if you go that way, you will soon be seeing hordes of ghostly Retracers...
All the best, --jorge
(10-10-2025, 07:23 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've noticed something possibly interesting on the page f114r.
There is a similar but more complicated "incident" on page f105r:
[
attachment=11679]
This has been discussed elsewhere years ago. Note that the right-justified half-line (A) above line 10 skips three gallows (B) from line 10. My best guess is that the Scribe accidentally omitted that text when breaking from line 10 to line 11, and realized the mistake only after he had written at least the start of line 11, probably more. Fortunately he had left plenty of space above line 10, except for those three gallows, so he remedied the mistake by writing the omitted text in that space.
One problem with this explanation, though, is that the baseline of line 10 tilts significantly down starting at ( C), as if to avoid the intruding line above. But then at (D) the baseline suddenly re-aligns at the position before ( C).
Another weird feature of this paragraph, which others have noted before, is that line 12 ends abruptly at (E) with
ot, which is very rare word and even more rare parag end. Then the next line begins at (F) with a noticeably smaller "font", finer strokes, and a straightened baseline.
I could imagine the Author dropping in when the Scribe was halfway through line 12, noticing the blunder of line 10, throwing a tantrum, and firing the Scribe on the spot, halfway through the last word. Then the next Scribe coming in and starting from line 13, without noticing the missing end of line 12.
But actually I don't see that much difference between the handwritings of lines 1-12 and lines 13-15. Further down the page the "font" grows back to the original size. So it probably was the same Scribe, with a sharper quill and a long pause between lines 12 and 13...
All the best, --jorge
