Paragraph layout

[Jorge_Stolfi]

The Voynich often signals a paragraph by:

• beginning on a fresh line,
  
• using an enlarged "gallows" glyph,
  
• leaving a visibly short final line in the previous paragraph without bothering about justification or waste of parchment.
  

The VMS also highlights paragraphs by increased use of "puffs" (p and f gallows) in the parag's head (first) line.  

These puffs are almost certainly fancy forms of other glyphs, although it is not yet certain which ones.  They may be the ordinary gallows k, t and/or their modified forms ke, te, or some other combinations.  The correspondence may not consistent.  I remember someone posting a manuscript where the text was sprinkled with similar (but more complicated) "gallows", with the mapping from gallows to the ordinary letters they replaced not being one-to-one. 

On the VMS, the "puffing" does not occur just on the first word; although, when it does, that puff is usually ornate.  

The puffing does not seem to be applied to the first sentence, because it extends for the whole first line, but never spills over the second line.

Within the head line, it is quite possible that not every occurrence of a puffable glyph or glyph cluster gets puffed.  Conversely, on rare occasions puffs are used on lines other than the head line.  Maybe those are proper names ("this herb was used by Merlin to seal a leak on the roof of his cave")

I once found You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (apparently a student's copy of an Oresme textbook) that used a somewhat similar style for paragraphs, namely special calligraphic treatment for the whole head line of every paragraph.  Surely there must be more examples?

All the best, --stolfi