[Essentials] Most common Voynich misconceptions

[Koen G]

I'll keep bouncing some "essentials" ideas off you guys

It might be handy to gradually build a list of common misconceptions or mistakes made by people studying the MS. This will allow us in the future to refer to that thread and say "you have fallen for misconceptions 6, 12 and 15". The advantage is that we don't really have to go looking for anything, the material will gradually come rolling in as we go along.

Ideally each misconception or commonly made mistake should be accompanied by a short explanation or a reference. We can divide them into different categories like imagery, text, statistics, linguistics, codicology... depending on what is collected. 

If it takes off, I will link this thread to an essentials thread and collect them there.

An example of what I have in mind:

Imagery

• Misconception #1: green water is somehow unusual
  Explanation: people often think that the green water in quire 13 needs a special explanation, like herbal baths. However, it was not unusual in medieval art for (salty) water to be colored green. Examples can be found on maps and De Balneis manuscripts.
  
  
  

And of course any misconceptions we include can be contested at all time.