Mind the Gap: On Columns and Other Patterns of Visual Organisation in Manuscripts

Studying written artefacts from a cross-cultural comparative perspective poses many challenges, one of which is a set of technical terms that were developed for the patterns in written artefacts from one particular manuscript culture. If used to describe those from others without sufficient reflection, the results can be misunderstandings at best and asymmetries that pose the patterns of one culture as ‘standard’ and any differences in others as divergences from this standard. This paper takes as its point of departure the humble script column, which has been a ubiquitous pattern of visual organisation of written artefacts in some, but by no means all manuscript cultures. It analyses the functions of this particular pattern of visual organisation and traces its origins to the Mediterranean cultures of the scroll before widening the perspective to consider alternative patterns of visual organisation developed by manuscript cultures that do not use columns to meet the particular challenges set by—and in turn informing—the formal, material, and writing patterns of their own written artefacts.