About the construction of lines in the MS

[Juan_Sali]

So it seems that two things are happening at the same time. Lines fill the available space, but they also tend to end and start with specific families of patterns.

Thanks for doing these tests!  But indeed we should expect the VMS to have stronger line-end anomalies than those that are created by the simple line-breaking algorithm.  Because the real algorithm has two more complications.

First, the m character is probably an abbreviation for some other ending, that the Scribe could use when needed but also just when he felt like it.   I guess that the "some other ending" is iin.  That is, where the trivial algorithm said

  1. If the next word W fits in the remaining space, write W,
  Else break the line and write W.

I dont think that the remaining space had in general any influence in the pre-creation of the last word.
The right margin is quite irregular in many pages, there is space to write larger words that would make the margin more regular, but this doesnt happen.
In the pages with more regular right margins, like 81v, it is possible that some last 2 or 3 words in a line were originally separated but aglutinated (spaces deleted) by the the scribe because of lack of space.