Rotating decoration on gallows f42v

[-JKP-]

I really don't know. It doesn't seem to lean toward one or the other. If it were a pilcrow, the shape wouldn't matter as long as the general idea is understood but I'm not certain they are pilcrows. SOME of them seem to act like pilcrows, but not all of them.

Hi JKP, is it possible that some pilcrows have double duty? For example, pilcrows came from capitula, which was simply a letter C with strokes (like S + strokes = $ or C + strokes = €). Is it possible that some writers omit the initial letter C or similar letters when writing pilcrows? For example, instead of writing:

¶Centaurus ...

They write:

¶entaurus ...

Just like some people nowadays would write Micro$oft or G∞gle for whatever reasons.

In the VMS, I think we have to assume anything is possible, since we don't know what it is, and the shapes might do double duty... but in medieval texts in general, the distinction between letters and pilcrows/capitula was pretty clear. In fact, they often drew the pilcrows in a different color (often blue or red) to make them stand out.


Statistically, in the VMS, there are many of them at the beginnings of paragraphs. I also noticed the first time I looked at the VMS that EVA-p and EVA-k frequently alternate at the beginning of paragraphs.

I find this interesting because in Latin texts, the "P" shape is often used for pilcrows and the EVA-k shape is often used as an abbreviation for "Item" which is very frequently used at the beginnings of paragraphs or phrases. Also, in Greek, the letter pi is frequently used at the beginnings of paragraphs and phrases to stand for "Peri" (and in Latin, pi is written with "p"-shape). When it means "peri", often an extra loop is added to the top right (to stand for the "e").


Maybe this is a coincidence, and maybe not.