This package contains the standard Voynich Manuscript transliteration files — originally prepared and maintained by René Zandbergen at voynich.nu — converted into an alternative collation.

The original transliterations follow the manuscript's current bound folio order. This current package reorders the same transliterated text into quire +"singulion" order: each physical sheet of vellum is treated as a single, standalone unit, as though the codex had been completely disassembled into its individual unbound sheets, rather than read in the page sequence of the book as it is bound today. No transliterated text is altered, merged, or interpreted in the process — only relabeled and regrouped.

Why it may be useful

Some researchers have argued that the Voynich Manuscript's current binding may not reflect its original sheet arrangement. This singulion collation is offered for anyone studying the manuscript's textual properties at the level of individual sheets rather than bound pages — for example, examining whether patterns in vocabulary, glyph statistics, or scribal behavior align more naturally with sheet boundaries than with the current page order. This reordering is consistent with recent research by Colin Layfield and Lisa Fagin-Davis exploring a possible singulion structure underlying the manuscript's construction.

What's included

Zandbergen's original files are plain ASCII and so special/extended transcription characters are written using IVTFF's numeric escape notation (@<code>;, e.g. @253; for ý). For our internal research purposes, we produced UTF-8 versions of each file, writing those same characters as literal accented/extended characters instead of escape codes. And more recently, we produced these converted files to reflect the alternative collation based in individual unbound sheets.

The package includes both encodings of every converted transliteration, so you can choose whichever suits your tools:

  • .txt — plain ASCII, special characters as @<code>; escapes (matches Zandbergen's original encoding convention).
  • .ivtff — UTF-8, special characters written literally.

Naming Convention

The leading tag on the lines indicate the quire and singulion (or "sheet") location instead of the folio designation. The form of the tag is as follows:

q[quire number]_s[sheet number][side of sheet]

Name Examples:      q1_s1r, q1_s1v, q16_s5r

An Important Note on Accuracy

These converted files are provided as-is and have only undergone minimal QA at this time. If you identify errors, or have suggestions for improving the notation, please get in touch — feedback is very welcome. (Email andrew@quantumlynxresearch.com).