[Blog Post] Rightward and Downward in the Voynich Manuscript - Patrick Feaster

[MarcoP]

I really like how Obelus' 2d histograms make Patrick's method even more readable. From these examples, the left-to-right shift in the behaviour of 'qo' is apparent. It is also clear that there are strong line-effects at the end of lines. Vertically, the last lines of paragraphs also appear to behave differently. The relative rarity of 'qo' in the last row and last column appear to add up in the bottom-right cell that shows a spike in the o/qo distribution in the last plot. This could be largely due to the very last word of paragraphs, where I count 202 o-words and only 35 q-words (ratio 5.8 vs an average of 1.4).

Once again, Voynichese patterns appear to be soft preferences rather than hard rules. Though qo- at the end of paragraphs appears to be avoided, there still are enough "exceptions" that one has to admit that the occurrence of qo- is that position is a valid option.