Is the writing really left to right?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

[has it been observed] the hand writing is left to right based on the ductus of the words?

The left rail of the text is generally more even than the right rail.  The last line of each parag is almost always left-justified and ends at some variable distance from the right rail.

On many lines that extend all the way to right rail, the last few characters look more compressed than usual. That is much less frequent at the left rail.   The same "feature" can be seen in many places where the text is interrupted by a plant or other figure: characters immediately to the left of the obstacle often look compressed, while those on the other side are generally more "relaxed".

When a scribe who is writing running text from left to right gets close to the right rail, he automatically estimates whether the next few words will fit there; he will fit as many as possible (stretching them so that the line ends at the right rail) and then continue on the next line.  This trivial line-breaking algorithm has the side effect of making the words in line-initial position longer, on the average, than other words in the text.  This length bias has recently been found to occur on the VMS.

Because of these and other clues, it is generally assumed that the text on the VMS was written left to right.

All the best, --jorge
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