This is a page from a Book of Hours from the section containing the Office of the Dead, in this case a passage from the Book of Job.

The layout is simple but elegant. There are ample margins, and the ruling (in pink ink) is an integral part of the page design, meant to be seen.

The line of writing sits above the rule, so that we have to talk of the notional head and baseline. The ruled line acts as a guide for the ends of descenders and the tops of ascenders.
Lines are evenly spaced: the space between the written lines is equal to the space between head-line and base-line.

However, since the ascenders and descenders are protracted, they can clash.

The text is left- and fairly well right- justified. This is achieved by breaking words at the ends of lines 5, 12 etc. (He has made a mistake at the end of line 5: the first two letters of the next word are picked up again at the beginning of line 6.)
He also uses abbreviations at the ends of lines to save space. At one point he puts in what looks like a hyphen but is in fact a line-filler.

		The passage from Job is introduced by a illuminated capital P.
		It is also marked by a rubric with Roman numbers
		The text is laid out as continuous prose, with each verse marked by a coloured versal: a capital letter touched in yellow ochre.

Punctuation

is by colon (on the head- and base-lines) and full stop.

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© MEG TWYCROSS 2000