The i-hooks and the tail coverage

[-JKP-]

Anton: What could be the significance of tail coverage? One thing that it would not be is marking covered i's as strokes of a single glyph. That's because coverage is observed over e's as well - and e shapes are clearly standalone, not combinable into a single glyph. Other than that, I can imagine some operator over the preceding glyphs as operands. What it is exactly - I can't tell, same as for the gallows coverage.

There are many ways of looking at this and one is that there is some special VMS system at work here (just as there appears to be some consistency to the way curves and lines are combined).


So, I offer this information as how it TRADITIONALLY works, even though I know it might not be how Voynichese works. So, it may or may not be relevant to Voynichese, but this is what occurs in most medieval Latin script...


In languages that use Latin scribal conventions, the direction of the tail, and the length of the tail, and the presence or absence of a hook (by this I mean an end hook, not the connecting hook) is meaningful for some letters and not meaningful for others.

• For example, in Latin, EVA-r and EVA-s can have tails of varying lengths and it doesn't change the meaning.... usually. There are occasional exceptions. Most of the time EVA-s stands for "con" (if it's c with a tail rather than e with a tail, both of which are drawn the same way) but it can sometimes stand for "contra". Most scribes don't change the length of the tail, but some of the more methodical ones will give EVA-s a longer tail if it's "contra".
  
• Some scribes add a hook to the end of the tail if the letter that has been left out is "r" rather than "m" or "n". This end-hook IS found on some of EVA-r characters in the VMS. It may not have the same meaning in Voynichese but it definitely has the same specific shape and it sometimes hints at this shape at the ends of some of the dain groups.
  
• For EVA-y the length of the tail doesn't change the meaning, only the position in the word changes the meaning. The same is true for EVA-m, the direction of the tail doesn't change anything but unlike EVA-y which is commonly used at both the beginnings and ends of words, EVA-m is usually at the ends of words (and sometimes is used as a line-end or paragraph-end marker).
  
• For some scribes, the length of end-tail (as when it is attached to the letters "a" or "u" where it is often seen, similar to the tail on the vord "dain") is meaningful. An end-tail is a connected macron, connected to make it easier to write quickly. Most scribes don't worry about the length of the tail but a few will end the tail above the place where the missing letters would be located (this is often used to indicate a missing "r"). Some will use a short tail to mean one or two letters are missing and a longer tail to mean several letters are missing.
  

In other words, in Latin, the length of the tail and the end-position of the tail (and the shape at the end of the tail, if there is a hook) are meaningful, but it is only the methodical scribes who do it this way. From what I have seen, about 80% of scribes don't bother with these distinctions or some will make distinctions for some letters and not for others.

I have examples of these (and also clips of where they occur in the VMS), but it's very time-consuming to hunt them up and post them.