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Is the writing really left to right?

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• Is the writing really left to right?

• Is the writing really left to right?

  Skoove > 12-10-2025, 08:57 PM

  I've always thought (perhaps even assumed) that the manuscript appears to written left to right and the spacing of the 'words' make best sense if this was the case, but do we have any real 'smoking guns' that show/prove this is definitely the case?
  
  Have any handwriting experts suggested that the hand writing is left to right based on the ductus of the words?

• RE: Is the writing really left to right?

  qoltedy > 12-10-2025, 09:23 PM

  It's very clearly left to right, even for a non expert to figure out, because the text is almost perfectly aligned on the left side, and very often not aligned on the right side. Partial lines almost always start totally aligned with the left side then end in the middle. It seems extremely improbable that anyone would write in that way right to left unless they were an expert in specifically trying to fool people into believing it's left to right.
  
  However, one thing that I don't see discussed much is the order of writing WITHIN words. For example, gallows characters that extend over multiple letters of a word, often at the top of paragraphs, seem to have a quality where they always perfectly align with the letters below. This makes me think that they may write a vertical line upwards, then the rest of the word, say "ol", and then go back and finish off the gallows character, to extend over that "ol". This wouldn't exactly be right to left, but it would indicate multiple passes when writing certain words, where the first pass is incomplete, and the second one fleshes out more specific pen strokes on top.

• RE: Is the writing really left to right?

  Jorge_Stolfi > 12-10-2025, 09:25 PM

  (12-10-2025, 08:57 PM)Skoove Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[has it been observed] the hand writing is left to right based on the ductus of the words?

  
  The left rail of the text is generally more even than the right rail.  The last line of each parag is almost always left-justified and ends at some variable distance from the right rail.
  
  On many lines that extend all the way to right rail, the last few characters look more compressed than usual. That is much less frequent at the left rail.   The same "feature" can be seen in many places where the text is interrupted by a plant or other figure: characters immediately to the left of the obstacle often look compressed, while those on the other side are generally more "relaxed".
  
  When a scribe who is writing running text from left to right gets close to the right rail, he automatically estimates whether the next few words will fit there; he will fit as many as possible (stretching them so that the line ends at the right rail) and then continue on the next line.  This trivial line-breaking algorithm has the side effect of making the words in line-initial position longer, on the average, than other words in the text.  This length bias has recently been found to occur on the VMS.
  
  Because of these and other clues, it is generally assumed that the text on the VMS was written left to right.
  
  All the best, --jorge
  ]

• RE: Is the writing really left to right?

  Skoove > Yesterday, 04:11 PM

  (12-10-2025, 09:25 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (12-10-2025, 08:57 PM)Skoove Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[has it been observed] the hand writing is left to right based on the ductus of the words?

  
  On many lines that extend all the way to right rail, the last few characters look more compressed than usual. That is much less frequent at the left rail.  The same "feature" can be seen in many places where the text is interrupted by a plant or other figure: characters immediately to the left of the obstacle often look compressed, while those on the other side are generally more "relaxed".
  
  When a scribe who is writing running text from left to right gets close to the right rail, he automatically estimates whether the next few words will fit there; he will fit as many as possible (stretching them so that the line ends at the right rail) and then continue on the next line.  This trivial line-breaking algorithm has the side effect of making the words in line-initial position longer, on the average, than other words in the text.  This length bias has recently been found to occur on the VMS.
  
  Because of these and other clues, it is generally assumed that the text on the VMS was written left to right.
  
  All the best, --jorge
  ]

  
  Thank you Jorge. Do you think that this still fits with the idea that the VMS was based on a draft? I imagine that the draft would have been written on similar sized vellum/parchment and therefore the scribes would have seen how the spacing of the words might work before writing it down on the VMS. Why would they become squished for space if they could see previous spacing examples?
  
  Also do you think this strictly excludes the underlying text/language (natural, artificial, enciphered etc.) from being supposed to be written right to left and the author chose to make it left to right? I know this is very speculative and probably 'anything is possible' but I often wonder if this could be adding to the list of incorrect prima facie assumptions we make about the VMS.

• RE: Is the writing really left to right?

  Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 06:31 PM

  (Yesterday, 04:11 PM)Skoove Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do you think that this still fits with the idea that the VMS was based on a draft?t

  
  I think it s highly unlikely that the Author composed the text directly on vellum.  For one thing, even if the ink is not iron-gall but some sort of watercolor, erasing the inevitable mistakes would leave stains or scrape marks.  Also the strokes are quite neat considering the small size of the glyphs (o-height 1.5 mm or less), suggesting that whoever wrote them was fairly skilled at handling a quill on vellum -- which probably was not the case for a generic scholar/doctor/herbalist/astrologer/whatever.  Also the scribing would have been a tedious mechanical task requiring a significant amount care and planning.
  
  And, if a section was written by N distinct Scribes, at least N-1 of them would not be the Author.
  
  For these reasons, I believe that the Scribe was probably a professional hired by the Author, rather than the Author himself.  The Author would have composed the text and sketched the drawings in a draft, that could be messy and ugly, with crossed-out parts and arrows "this line goes in here" etc.
  
  

  Quote:I imagine that the draft would have been written on similar sized vellum/parchment

  
  Vellum was relatively expensive (one estimate I have seen was $2 per folio in today's money; some say even more).  It was used only for documents that should last for decades or centuries and resist wear and humidity -- such as contracts, deeds, decrees, treatises, chronicles, compendiums, prayer books, bibles, etc.  Paper, much cheaper, would be used or short-lived documents, like private letters, ledgers, working notes -- and drafts.
  
  

  Quote:and therefore the scribes would have seen how the spacing of the words might work before writing it down on the VMS. Why would they become squished for space if they could see previous spacing examples?

  
  The draft of a manuscript may specify the line breaks and spacing for some kinds of text, like verses, tables, labels, titles, and radial and circular lines in diagrams.  But a paragraph is usually understood to be just a single string of words, with line breaks to be inserted by the scribe as determined by the size of letters and the width the vellum sheet, which usually do not match those of the draft.
  
  On many herbal pages the length of the text lines varies because of the drawing.  
  
  On page 112r, the first line ended about 2 cm from the right edge of the vellum (which had a chunk missing).  The last few glyphs of that line are blurry, probably because the surface of the vellum had some defect there.  So for the next 20 lines or so the Scribe broke each line 4-5 cm away from the edge, and then returned to the "normal" right rail.  On the opposite side, f112v, he set the left rail 3-4 cm away from the edge, right from line 1, and after 10 lines or so gradually shifted the left rail towards its "normal" position.  
  
  These incidents, and therefore the line breaks, surely were not predicted by the Author in the draft.
  
  

  Quote:Also do you think this strictly excludes the underlying text/language (natural, artificial, enciphered etc.) from being supposed to be written right to left and the author chose to make it left to right?

  
  It is indeed possible that the Author wrote the draft from right to left, with the last line of each parag left-justified, but the Scribe chose to read the text from left to right, and left-justify the last line.  
  
  In that case, when the Scribe inserted his own line breaks, the text would be completely messed up. Like 
  
    Text: "there are two kinds of dragons those that spit fire and those that would rather eat people raw with tartar sauce"
  
    Draft written right to left:
      snogard fo sdnik owt era ereht
      esoht dna erif tips taht esoht
      war elpoep tae rehtar dluow taht
      ecuas ratrat htiw
  
   Text as read by scribe: "snogard fo sdnik owt era ereht esoht dna erif tips taht esoht war elpoep tae rehtar dluow taht ecuas ratrat htiw"
  
    Text on vellum, with line breaks chosen by scribe:
      snogard fo sdnik owt era ereht  esoht  dna
      erif tips taht esoht war elpoep tae rehtar
      dluow taht ecuas ratrat htiw
  
    Text read from vellum from right to left: "and those there are two kinds of dragons rather eat people raw those that spit fire with tartar sauce that would"
  
  But I don't think this is the case.  There are other clues that are consistent with left-to-right both in the draft and in the final copy.  Like the first --leftmost -- word of each parag being somewhat special.
  
  All the best, --jorge
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