Penultimate glyph

There are only a few points of confusion in the glyph sets presented on page f57v.  They have been discussed a thousand times, but there are some matters that still need clarification. One of them is the penultimate glyph in the sequence, the letter denoted as the EVA letter <c>. Here are the four depictions of the glyph on that page:

The difficulty is that the first instance of the glyph shows it made up of two straight lines set at an angle but the other three cases of it consist of a straight top lines adjoined to a c-curve. Thus:

It raises the question: which is it? It is an important distinction. Is it made for a backslash or a c-curve? Or are we being shown two different forms of the same letter? The glyph could belong to either one of two glyph sets - the geometric 'alchemical' glyphs (that are rare) or the cursive lower-case Latin-like set.  (See the previous post for an account of this.) Is the difference in the glyphs deliberate and significant or is it just that the scribe has drawn the glyph in different ways?

Since c-curves and backslashes are structural elements of the main glyph set of the Voynich alphabet it is hard to suppose that the difference shown in the glyphs in this case could be unintended. The deviating form, the angular presentation, seems very deliberate. It is not a poorly drawn c-curve. It is definitely a straight line at an angle. But the other three cases are equally very deliberate c-curves and not straight lines. There does not seem to be confusion on the part of the scribe, unless the straight-lined form is simply a mistake and the scribe drew a straight-line when he was supposed to draw a c-curve. In transcriptions and in EVA, and on the computerized text at Voynichese.com there is no distinction. Every form is transcribed as a <c>. 

The weight of evidence suggests that this is a fair assumption. There is another instance of the same glyph on page f66r. It appears there with a version of the same glyph with which it appears on page f57v. It is unquestionably made up of the straight top line and the c-curve:

The straight-angled form found on page f57v, then, would seem to be the aberration. The c-curved form would seem to be the standard. The deviant straight-lined form on f57v may still be deliberate, and may carry some significance, but the c-curved form is undoubtedly the regular form.

Notice that the accompanying final letter is drawn with ticks (or feet) at the top of both lines, at variance to the plain forms found on page f57v. The variation doesn't seem significant. If anything it seems decorative. Similarly, there are minor variations in how the glyphs appear on page f57v without any suggestion those minor variations are encoded with special meanings. There seems to be a fair degree of latitude in how glyphs are drawn.

Compare the four presentations of the Voynich letter <m> shown above. Each of them is slightly different. In two of them, for example - the first and the third from the top - the tail has a downwards leftwards tick attached.

Is a difference like this significant? Does an <m> with a curl on its tail mean something different to an <m> without a curl on its tail? The evidence suggests not. Sometimes the scribe writes it one way and sometimes another. We should not expect high degrees of exactitude and consistency. There are many minor variations in how the glyphs are drawn, without changing the value and meaning of the glyph. 

This is an important principle to establish. There are those who  adopt the attitude that nothing should be attributed to scribal error or scribal fancy until every other possibility is exhausted. They begin with the assumption of encoded details - as if every tittle and flourish is significant - until proven otherwise. This strikes me as unwarranted and cumbersome. It is, after all, a handwritten manuscript from the Quattrocento, and not a professional one either. Mistakes, errors, inconsistencies, aberrations, sloppiness and scribal indulgences are all entirely to be expected.

Are these four glyphs on page F57v the same or different? The evidence suggests that they are the same, one glyph drawn slightly differently each time. The differences in the curled superscript, though quite severe, do not appear to be intentional or meaningful. 

R. B.