Sam G wrote: Also, here's a comparison image I made a while back if anyone wants it:
It's a handy way to represent it, Sam.
It's difficult to know the level of detail at which to analyze these sequences...
- The 11th character has a foot on the inner three rings, but not on the outer one.
- The foot of the Latin "9" abbreviation shape on the 10th character touches the base on the inner three, but not on the outer one.
- The curl on the 12th character doesn't touch the stem on the inner three, but it does on the outer one.
- The leg on the 16th character is curved on the inner three, but not on the outer one.
- The lower left part of the loop of the 3rd character is curved on the inner three, but not on the outer one.
- The right-hand stem of character 17 curves up on the inner three, but down on the outer one.
- The leg of character 14 has no foot on the inner three rings, but has a foot on the outer one.
- There is a foot on the 7th character in rings 2 and 4, but not 1 and 3.
- There is no loop on the end of the tail of character 8 in rings 2 and 4, but there is in rings 1 and 3.
- Character 6 has a straight right leg in rings 2 and 4, but a slight foot in rings 1 and 3.
Francis Bacon developed ciphers with such minute differences that you need a magnifying glass to see them and some people have suggested the VMS was made with tiny-but-significant differences in the glyphs, I haven't seen any signs that the VMS is created with the intention to read tiny differences as significant. I've looked for those kinds of patterns and haven't found any that are convincing—at least not yet.
But whether small differences matter (as compared to tiny differences), I'm not sure. Based on the main text, I think there may be a distinction between the straight figure-8 and the round one and I think there may be a distinction between a round-legged 9 and a straight-legged 9, regardless of what is included in this chart. The others I suspect are just differences in how the pen is used.