Paragraph layout

[davidjackson]

If we discard the idea that the Voynich was designed to be read aloud - clearly most of it was not

Why not?

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They are there, but they are written in an "economical" style, i.e., the style of the entire manuscript:

All these examples are page initial characters.

Because the layout of the text is not set out to be vocalised. Medieval manuscripts that were designed to be read alound - psalms or even special copies of the Bible, for example - had a different layout. I do not mean you cannot read the Voynich aloud, I mean that the layout is not a format that medieval readers would recognise for that purpose.