One question that cropped up was whether hand-writing manuals created or reflected practice. Gibson suggested it was fair to say that they – and the jobbing writing masters that went with them – helped to create practice in England at least. Maybe it was different for Italy, though.
One ‘problem’ question that came up was: what was the significance of writing in different hands? ’Problem’ because it was uncertain whether there was any significance in it at all, that it must surely remain conjecture and therefore perhaps unhelpful, and because no-one was able to answer it!
Guillaume Coatalen did, however, suggest that there were typical changes depending on the language one was writing in – and that Italian was often similar to Latin, and English often not dissimilar to French. Perhaps this could be connected to writing manuals again…
