The bottom four lines of 10r are similar to that. An EVA o is squashed up against the y glyph for the fourth line from the bottom, and another one is squashed up against the q glyph for the third line from the bottom. The last two lines start with a squished EVA r, particularly the second from last.
The 10r ones are interesting because this is the only example of an o-o vertical pair in Herbal A (Scribe 1), and oq and oy are rare glyph combinations.
If the initial glyphs have been written later, there could be several reasons. One could be that, if abbreviations and/or homophones are used, it was decided on rereading that the words weren't sufficiently clear and needed an extra boost. But we would probably expect to see this clusters more elsewhere, and we don't. And abbreviation at the start of the word is rare outside the VM, unless we think the words are reversed.
Another could be that the scribe was straying from the usually neat left margin, and the glyphs were later added to restore a straight left edge. They could be meaningful (as per above idea) or meaningless nulls. If you look at 10r, the first paragraph shows a slight slant. It's possible this continued and became more conspicuous in the second paragraph, requiring correction. I favour this explanation but we can probably find counter examples of tolerated margin slant.
The 10r ones are interesting because this is the only example of an o-o vertical pair in Herbal A (Scribe 1), and oq and oy are rare glyph combinations.
(04-09-2025, 02:39 PM)quimqu wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On the other hand, if o and s were added afterwards, then again… why would they have been written later in the first place? Are they a sort of positional code?
If the initial glyphs have been written later, there could be several reasons. One could be that, if abbreviations and/or homophones are used, it was decided on rereading that the words weren't sufficiently clear and needed an extra boost. But we would probably expect to see this clusters more elsewhere, and we don't. And abbreviation at the start of the word is rare outside the VM, unless we think the words are reversed.
Another could be that the scribe was straying from the usually neat left margin, and the glyphs were later added to restore a straight left edge. They could be meaningful (as per above idea) or meaningless nulls. If you look at 10r, the first paragraph shows a slight slant. It's possible this continued and became more conspicuous in the second paragraph, requiring correction. I favour this explanation but we can probably find counter examples of tolerated margin slant.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)