# Directionality of the Voynich Script

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10573 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10573/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 Sep 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Evidence of Layered Positional and Directional Constraints in the Voynich Manuscript: Implications for Cipher-Like Structure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19762/) (2026)
- [A Glyph Is Not a Letter, a Token Is Not a Word, a Space Is Not a Space: What the Units of Voynichese Are Not](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.17096/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While the Voynich Manuscript was almost certainly written left-to-right (LTR), the question whether the underlying script or cipher reads LTR or right-to-left (RTL) has received little quantitative attention. We introduce a statistical method that leverages n-gram perplexity asymmetry to determine directional bias in character sequences.