Question about paragraph justification

[Hermes777]

The text reads left to right and is divided into what we call paragraphs (items). The left justification often seems obsessive or excessively stylized, but it is justifications of the final lines of paragraphs that I find most interesting. Quite often, additional words appear with right justification as if they are the completion of the final sentence. But often these additional words are left-hand justified (as we would do) or else centred. Or, sometimes, there is a combination: a few words left justified, a word or two right justified.

As I say, our standard is to return to the left margin and finish the sentence there - it seems natural to left-to-right scripts. In the VMS there is no settled convention. Final words can be justified to either margin, or both, or centred.

I wonder if this is unusual or a common irregularity from before conventions were established?

Since there is much talk about the 'line as a functional unit' and the ends of lines seem to be an environment in which certain glyph transformations take place there might be some other significance to the placement of the final stray words of paragraphs. I'm not convinced these stray words are in fact the completion of the previous line: they may stand alone as separate units. In any case, left, right or centre justifications of the words at the end of many paragraphs seem worthy of discussion.

(I note that Anton started a thread on "orphaned vords" on this question. This is the more active thread so I posted here. In Anton's thread it is noted - importantly - that the inconsistent alignment of "orphaned vords" happens in all sections of the text and seems to be a deliberate, global feature of the work rather than being the idiosyncratic signature of a particular scribe.)