How to square handwriting variation?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

When anyone is contemplating that r or s could easily be written with a single stroke, should this stroke be written bottom up or top down?

Hm... to get ink to the tip of the nib, you must apply enough pressure to the pen to spread the two tines apart slightly.  As @nablator said, you don't want to do that while pushing the pen in the general northwest direction.  So, if the r and s were written in a single stroke, it would have to be top to bottom.

That would mean a broad plume with a butt end at the top.  Sometimes we see that, but the norm seems to be a thin plume with a thin point at the top end.

This becomes even more interesting with d, which can be seen as an s with an additional stroke. The next step then is towards g and m.

I don't think I ever saw one of those shaped as if it was written in one stroke.  In either direction it would mean pushing the pen to the northwest at some point.  Then only one of the two halves could be a broad stroke, the other would have to be thin.  But whenever I looked, both sides were broad,and the loop was thin..

All the best, --stolfi