On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

[Emma May Smith]

While I'm happy to concede that some of the glyphs in the Voynich script resemble those found elsewhere, I don't believe that a sound case can be made for them acting positionally the same.

Take [y] for example. It is true that it occurs at the start and end of words, much like the scribal abbreviation. Yet it is overwhelming found at the end of words in most the text. Its placement at the start of a word is strongly tied to the start of a line. Further, it is also one of the glyphs which can stand alone, which makes no sense if somebody is trying to pass it off as an abbreviated prefix or suffix. It also isn't commonly found superscripted as asserted, and while instances of it are interesting, they can't be regarded as usual.

I think that the similarities between the Voynich script and scribal abbreviations must come from one of two sources: 1) the inventor used a repertoire of shapes known to him, or 2) there is only a limited number of shapes possible with the medium and some similarity will always be found.