The Voynich Ninja

I was looking at Tom O'Neil's site yesterday to see how his numerology system worked, and it seems he noticed something which hasn't been discussed before (to my knowledge): there is clearly an alphabet on the first page:

ABCDEFGH ... OPQ... UV

It begins on the top right side of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and continues down vertically - here are the first 8 or 9 letters:



After that there is a blank space, but further down we get OPQ and maybe U or V (in the same handwriting as the U/V on f116v):



This could be important for at least two reasons:


1) Anyone who makes a secret code always writes their key somewhere, and the key is usually written next to a plaintext alphabet. I made my own cipher many years ago, and I always wrote the key next to the Roman alphabet, in alphabetical order. This leads to point 2:

2) It is clear that there were Voynichese symbols next to some letters. A clear <d> is seen to the right of "a", and there seems to be an <r> next to the "c". There are many other marks near Roman letters, but it looks like they were smudged out / erased (perhaps so that nobody could read the code). Just take a look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for yourself:




I wonder if this column used to be a key. Imagery people (Koen, Wladimir, Diane, etc.), do you know if there is any way to locate traces of the removed letters using Photoshop?

Last thing: when I break down the VMS into my hypothetical "units", <d> always appeared where a vowel was needed - so <a> could be a perfect fit.