How to square handwriting variation?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

These three EVA-sh ligatures (see below) on f4r are all in a row but all have a different form and shape. How can one square these differences.

My answer is that some of the differences are partly just normal handwriting variations (as others pointed out, the letters are very small: the o-height in that text is less 1.5 mm) and partly the result of most of the text having been restored by someone who was very careful but did not even know the alphabet.

Check the lower part of the plume on the second Sh of that line, or the lower part of the stem of the q on the line above.  I believe that the all original writing on that page had already faded to that state, or worse, centuries ago.  Practically all of the text we see now is restoration.  The bits of original text that were not retraced, like those two examples, are parts that had faded less.

The original plumes were drawn with a quick swish of the pen from the bottom up and turning counterclockwise.   But the top part of most plumes was retraced slowly in the wrong direction (clockwise), giving them a crooked and forced look, often with a distinct break where they join the original trace.  On a signature, that sort of thing would be obvious evidence of amateur forgery.

On line 2, next to the plant, after the word Chaiin there is an invalid glyph that resembles the right stroke of an o.  My guess is that either there was an o there, whose left stroke faded to complete invisibility; or there was nothing there, and the Retracer just hallucinated that half-o.  Either way, I take that as evidence that the Retracer did not know the Voynichese alphabet.

All the best, --stolfi