[split] Line padding, layout, Currier's "groups of letters"...

[Torsten]

I simply cannot imagine that Currier would be talking about words, when he says ' little groups of letters'.
Eva-am could be one such little group, but he uses the plural, so we need others too. And again, this little group really occurs elsewhere too.

It looks like a line-final version of -ar, but that doesn't really fit completely. (Nothing ever does ).

In any case, these occurrences only constitute a minor percentage of all lines.

Alphabetic scripts use groups of letters to transport meaning. But even for them it is possible that on semantic level a group of letters represent only a part of a word (if hyphenation is used) or represents two or more words.

Moreover, the term 'groups of letters' is not the only instance Currier is referencing to groups of letters or symbols. In appendix A from 1976 Currier also writes about "symbol groups 'chol' and 'chor'" and about: "Symbol groups at the ends of lines are frequently of a character unlike those appearing in the body of the text sometimes having the appearance of fillers" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

Anyway, the observation of Currier that the line appears to be a functional unit was further analyzed in 2012 by Elmar Vogt. In his statistical analysis Vogt comes to the conclusion: "1. The first word of a line is longer than average, 2. The second word is shorter than average, and 3. Over the course of the line, the average word length drops" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 4).

We have evidence that the scribe was choosing little groups of letters to fill out the line to the margin. Or to say it with Nick Pelling words: the "text goes right up to the line-ends, often deteriorating in the last few characters, in much the way that I'd expect nulls to (Currier noted as much)" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This can only mean that the text as well as the text layout and even damages to the vellum were copied or that the text was generated during writing.

But even if you can't accept Curriers observation as evidence I would still argue that speculations "that the MS has been copied from a draft" and that "the copyist did not understand what he was copying" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) are far from helpful. It is far too simple to explain every curious detail as copying error. This way it is literally possible to explain everything.