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+--- Thread: How to square handwriting variation? (/thread-5005.html)
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - Bluetoes101 - 24-11-2025
You should see my doctors handwriting Rafal. No amount of understanding English will help
When you think about it I'm shocked not more people have perished due to being given completely the wrong medicine..
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - rikforto - 24-11-2025
I opened my hard copy of the VMS back up to see how much I was relying on the magnification to make my judgement, and the curve in that first letter that I think might have meaning is awfully small, I'll grant, but it is visible and distinct to the naked eye. As I flipped through, I think the more immediate problem for me is that it just doesn't seem to be common. Now, there are lots of rare and one-off examples in the manuscript, but without a group to form a basis for comparison I have some doubts. And while I'm not totally ready to give up my reading there, I might have to admit that I can argue that the commas that look like y versus the "open" ones are more compelling evidence of meaningful variation.
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - oshfdk - 24-11-2025
(24-11-2025, 07:50 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I opened my hard copy of the VMS back up to see how much I was relying on the magnification to make my judgement, and the curve in that first letter that I think might have meaning is awfully small, I'll grant, but it is visible and distinct to the naked eye. As I flipped through, I think the more immediate problem for me is that it just doesn't seem to be common. Now, there are lots of rare and one-off examples in the manuscript, but without a group to form a basis for comparison I have some doubts. And while I'm not totally ready to give up my reading there, I might have to admit that I can argue that the commas that look like y versus the "open" ones are more compelling evidence of meaningful variation.
While this absolutely could mean something, I just looked at some examples or s and r from same page, and in many of them (maybe even more than a half) the upper tip of the flourish starts with a hook, so, at first the quill makes a tiny semi circular motion before going into the main stroke. Make this motion a bit more vigorously and there will be a loop. Also at the bottom center there is an example of what appears like some struggles with the quill from the same page. So, overall, combined with the misalignment of the flourish and the base, I won't bet too much on this being a deliberate shape.
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - LisaFaginDavis - 24-11-2025
This is a fundamental methodological question about paleography. When are variants attributable to scribes being human and therefore inconsistent, and when do they signal a change of hand? Unfortunately, there are no good answers. Paleography is inherently subjective. If you stare at any handwritten book long enough, you can convince yourself that there are 300 scribes or only one. There is, of course, an objective truth, but that truth can often only be expressed as an opinion.
In my own work researching, describing, and cataloguing hundreds of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts over the last 35 years, consideration of the number of scribal hands in a manuscript has always been a critical component. Every paleographer has their own style and has to make their own decisions about when to interpret a sample as the same scribe or a different one, based on experience, general appearance, codicological considerations, and specific letterforms. Having a sense of which letterforms are going to be useful for distinguishing hands is something that comes with experience and time, and the useful diagnostic forms vary by place and time. For example, in a late medieval manuscript from England, I would refer to the [a] and the [g] in particular. In 12th-century Germany, I'd look at [&], [ct], and [g]. In 10th-c. France, I'd consider different forms.
For the Voynich, we are in uncharted waters, since there are no dated and localized manuscripts in the script for us to compare. And so we have to draw conclusions based on comparisons to other types of scripts (such as Humanistic Bookhand) and by considering letterforms carefully. But none of that helps us decide if two EVA [d]s that are near one another but look somewhat different from one another are by the same hand. They might be, they might not be. My own determination is that each page (with the exception of 115r), most leaves, and most bifolia in the manuscript is/are each attributable to a single scribe. I stand by that work, but no one is obliged to agree with me.
I'm sorry I can't be more helpful, but this is a question that professional paleographers have been debating for decades. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that scribes are human. Being human means that they are inconsistent. It's also what makes manuscripts so delightful.
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - Skoove - 25-11-2025
(24-11-2025, 08:24 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.While this absolutely could mean something, I just looked at some examples or s and r from same page, and in many of them (maybe even more than a half) the upper tip of the flourish starts with a hook, so, at first the quill makes a tiny semi circular motion before going into the main stroke. Make this motion a bit more vigorously and there will be a loop. Also at the bottom center there is an example of what appears like some struggles with the quill from the same page. So, overall, combined with the misalignment of the flourish and the base, I won't bet too much on this being a deliberate shape.
I have actually been thinking about this for a while, that on the first couple of pages, there tends to be less uniformality in the scribes writting. If we are to assume that folio 1 is the first folio written, I think this actually makes sense. Effectively the scribe was the least experienced at this time and so they were still having some issues with writting a script that they weren't that used to writing. Scribe 1 tends to the best handwritting and spacing and by the later Herbal A folios, they don't make so many mistakes.
It is most obvious in the EVA-d, EVA-ch and EVA-y. The flow of these characters seems a lot more disjointed than it does in later Herbal A sections. As such, I think that when we are looking at pages like f2r, we should be expecting a bit more variation in a character that is the same.
As a side, I wonder to what degree we could leverage this to get deeper into how the script was formulated or at the very least, the way in which the scribe was thinking about each character when writing them.
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - oshfdk - 25-11-2025
I also think it's possible that Voynichese was being developed on the go to some extent.
Reminded me of this: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - Skoove - 25-11-2025
(25-11-2025, 07:22 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I also think it's possible that Voynichese was being developed on the go to some extent.
Reminded me of this: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that forum yet. I have always believed that '4o' developed from or is largely related to the t/k gallows as well.
I guess that a consistent development could account for the variation that we see even within VoyA under the same scribe. I'm not sure of the implications of this idea though, perhaps that just the glyphs were under a constant development or the underlying mechanism was under constant development? The latter is certainly more problematic to me since the amount of data that we could analyse for any 'consistent' set of text would possibly be reduced to single folios or quires....
On the other hand, if we could identify the evolution of Voynichese within the manuscript, we might get an insight into glyph allographs or glyphs that the scribe internally thought of as similar?
Do you know if anyone has attempted something like this (not based on context similarity but on a supposed evolution throughout the manuscript)?
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - quimqu - 25-11-2025
(24-11-2025, 08:24 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I just looked at some examples or s and r from same page
I have been thinking lately about the e and i forms that compound the majority of the glyphs (apart from the gallows). Those s and r look easy to write in a single stroke... Why should they be written in two strokes if they could be written in a single stroke? Were the e and i that compose those glyphs written firstly?... why? What is the role of e and i parts in the Voynich writting?
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - rikforto - 25-11-2025
(25-11-2025, 05:34 PM)quimqu Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Were the e and i that compose those glyphs written firstly?... why?
There's a regularity in how the e and i components lay on the page that makes me fairly sure they were put down first, and with an eye for aligning them.
Of course, why this should be the case is no less mystery to me than anyone else.
RE: How to square handwriting variation? - nablator - 25-11-2025
(25-11-2025, 05:34 PM)quimqu Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Why should they be written in two strokes if they could be written in a single stroke?
Because writing upward or leftward strokes with a quill on a surface that is not as flat as paper is a recipe for catastrophe. It's only possible if you are very careful: light upward strokes and thick downward strokes is lesson 1 in calligraphy.