Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text

[pfeaster]

A right-aligned word at the end of a page in a European medieval manuscript would likely be a catchword (that is, a repetition of the first word(s) of the next leaf, as a guide for the scribe and the binder...generally found at the end of a quire, but sometimes on every verso), but that isn't the case in the VMS. There aren't any right-aligned word(s) at the end of a page that match the beginning word(s) of any other leaves.

Also, on f1r and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there are right-aligned words at the end of every paragraph, and not just one at the bottom of the page, which doesn't seem to fit the catchword model either.

Here are a couple examples of similar-looking formatting, both taken from seventeenth-century manuscripts that are obviously much later than what we're looking at in the Voynich Manuscript, and that I chose only because they were conveniently at hand:

   
   

In both cases, the right-aligned text at the end of each entry (or "paragraph"?) represents a sum of money associated with the preceding description.  In these two cases, there's a dotted line connecting the end of the main text with the right-aligned part, but that isn't always present; sometimes there's only a gap, as in this third example (undated, but probably mid-to-late sixteenth century):

   

I'd be surprised if this type of formatting wasn't already being used for financial records in the fifteenth century, though I don't know this for a fact.

I don't suppose this is probably quite what's happening in the Voynich Manuscript, but maybe both cases at least serve a similar logic -- one where the right-justified text represents some specific kind of information associated with the longer text preceding it, formatted so as to make it easy to find quickly, without needing to hunt for it.