Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text

[pfeaster]

I think it likely that the herbal quires, at least, were originally each restricted to the work of a single scribe, and that the mix-ups happened during an early rebinding (perhaps after the catastrophic water damage occurred).

That was my original assumption too, and if I read something else into some of your remarks at the conference, I'm willing to admit I may have been reading something into them other than was there.

So while it is certainly possible that these patterns have meaning, they might also just be the result of scribal whim.

I could easily imagine the centered final paragraphs being a scribal whim.  I'm less sure about that third category of unusual alignment Rene mentions (Pt = "only the last word(s) right justified after a gap") -- the examples on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. especially.  Off the top of my head, the only formatting I can remember seeing that looks like this is in financial records, where the right-justified text in the last line following the gap represents a sum of money.  But I'd be interested to know if this kind of formatting turns up in other situations besides, either meaningfully or not.