13-04-2026, 04:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 13-04-2026, 04:53 PM by quimqu.
Edit Reason: Included plot
)
I have seen one interesting thing: when you take a normal text and cut it into artificial lines, something simple happens. Words at the edges of the line behave differently. The first word has no left context. The last word has no right context. This alone creates a small asymmetry.
You can see it clearly if you measure how predictable a word is from the previous one versus the next one. In natural texts, once you force them into lines, a very regular pattern appears. It’s always the same shape, and it’s not very strong. It comes from the cut, not from the language itself.
The Voynich behaves differently. It also shows positional effects, but they are stronger and the shape is not the same. The beginning of the line is much more constrained than expected, and the end behaves differently from what we see in normal texts.
If the Voynich were just a flat text that we are slicing into lines, it should look like the natural texts after segmentation. But it does not.
So the asymmetry itself is not surprising. You get it for free when you introduce line breaks in natural language texts. What matters is how it looks. In natural texts, it is weak, smooth, and very predictable. In the Voynich, it is stronger and shaped differently.
A simple way to measure directionality is to compare how well a word can be predicted from its previous word versus its next one, using entropy or prediction accuracy and taking the difference. If you take a normal text and cut it into artificial lines, you introduce broken contexts at the edges, so the first word has no real past and the last word has no real future. This alone creates a small and very stable pattern: asymmetry at the edges and near symmetry in the middle, which looks almost identical across different natural texts. The Voynich also shows positional effects, but they are stronger and not shaped the same way.
That makes it unlikely that the line structure is just a passive formatting layer. It looks more like something that actively constrains how the text is generated.
You can see it clearly if you measure how predictable a word is from the previous one versus the next one. In natural texts, once you force them into lines, a very regular pattern appears. It’s always the same shape, and it’s not very strong. It comes from the cut, not from the language itself.
The Voynich behaves differently. It also shows positional effects, but they are stronger and the shape is not the same. The beginning of the line is much more constrained than expected, and the end behaves differently from what we see in normal texts.
If the Voynich were just a flat text that we are slicing into lines, it should look like the natural texts after segmentation. But it does not.
| Position | Natural texts (segmented) | Voynich |
|---|---|---|
| First word | Moderate asymmetry (edge effect) | Strong asymmetry |
| Start | Near neutral | Clearly asymmetric |
| Middle | Almost flat | Near flat |
| End | Mild opposite effect | Strong opposite effect |
| Last word | Clear edge effect | Weaker than expected |
So the asymmetry itself is not surprising. You get it for free when you introduce line breaks in natural language texts. What matters is how it looks. In natural texts, it is weak, smooth, and very predictable. In the Voynich, it is stronger and shaped differently.
A simple way to measure directionality is to compare how well a word can be predicted from its previous word versus its next one, using entropy or prediction accuracy and taking the difference. If you take a normal text and cut it into artificial lines, you introduce broken contexts at the edges, so the first word has no real past and the last word has no real future. This alone creates a small and very stable pattern: asymmetry at the edges and near symmetry in the middle, which looks almost identical across different natural texts. The Voynich also shows positional effects, but they are stronger and not shaped the same way.
That makes it unlikely that the line structure is just a passive formatting layer. It looks more like something that actively constrains how the text is generated.