The bottom margin

[Emma May Smith]

What conclusions can I derive?

1. A Voynichese paragraph cannot be interrupted by a page break. (Marco, JKP and others: is that common for plain text manuscripts of the time?)

2. Up to the very bottom of the page, the scribe still does not know in advance whether the next paragraph will fit the page or will not. Hence, to comply with 1), he postpones the next paragraph to the next page, to be safe.

3. From 2), it follows that plain text is "translated" to Voynichese on-the-fly, just along its being put down on parchment. If it were not so, - in other words, if the source text were prepared already in Voynichese, - situations like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -> You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. would not have taken place, because the scribe would be able to assess that the next paragraph safely fits into the same page.

While the first conclusion is safe (surely it's an observation?), the second is not and the third is speculation.

1) Several pages of Quire 20 have the same number of stars/recipes on both recto and verso. This suggests that the writer could have been aiming for a specific number, regardless of whether another recipe would fit. Both 105r and 105v have ten recipes, 104r and 104v have thirteen, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and 106v have fifteen (though the stars don't match), and 107r and 107v also have fifteen.

2) There's no guarantee that the order we see pages in today is the original writing order. Pelling has put forward a good argument that Quire 20 may have originally been two, and that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was the original first page.