The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

In my opinion, parallels with typed text are rather misleading and anachronistic. Handwritten text is an entirely different matter, and spelling itself was a very different, far more fluid phenomenon, at a time when the transmission of knowledge was entirely manual and could not rely on mechanical means such as printing or keyboards. [...]

All you wrote is fine, but it is besides the point. 

That book was not a draft or personal notebook; it was a professional copy made at a "manuscript factory", for sale or to order.  Thus shortcuts, omission of the dots, and "regional variant' spellings wold not be acceptable.  Again, it is not me saying so, but the Proofreading Scribe who made those corrections in brown ink. 

As I recall, on the few pages I have examined, the Proofreader made very few corrections.  The number of corrections he made on that rubric seems to be evidence that the Rubricator was not the same scribe who wrote the main text. 

Some of those errors, like the omitted dots and the genitive in -e instead of -ae or -ę, could be ascribed to simple laziness. But I don't see how to explain other errors, like the spelling of the name of the book's author as lowercase "bone" instead of "Bona" -- except by assuming that he did not really understand Latin, so he did not realize that it was a proper name.  

To my eyes, the Rubricator's hadwriting is not bad.  So it is not like he was semi-illiterate or did not know how the proper way to shape a "ti". 

And the Rubricator could not blame the errors on the source.  That closing rubric note, like the rest of the book, was presumably copied from another professional copy of the book -- not from a cursive or hurried draft,like the VMS Scribe may have had.

Anyway, while we can debate whether that rubric is a pertinent example or not, my claim (again) is that a scribe who does not understand the language (or the encryption) that he is copying is much more prone to make errors (and more glaring errors) than a scribe who does.

All the best, --stolfi