TPO-35
In 1912 a bookseller named Wilfrid M. Voynich acquired a beautifully illustrated handwritten book (manuscript) written on vellum (vellum is a material that was used for writing before the introduction of paper). The "Voynich manuscript," as it became known, resembles manuscripts written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, it is written in a completely unknown script. To date, no one has been able to decode the script and understand the book's content. Several theories have been proposed to explain the origin of the Voynich manuscript. One theory is that the manuscript is a genuine work on some scientific or magical subject composed in a complex secret code. Anthony Ascham, a sixteenth-century physician and botanist, has been identified as a possible author, since many plant illustrations in the Voynich manuscript are quite similar to those in Ascham's book on medicinal plants, A Little Herbal, published in 1550. According to some other theories, the manuscript is really a fake and its text has no real meaning. For example, it has been proposed the manuscript was created by Edward Kelley, a sixteenth century personality who extracted money from nobles across Europe by pretending to have magical powers. Kelley may have created the manuscript as a fake magical book to sell to a wealthy noble. He used a made-up alphabet in a completely random order. It looks like a book of magical secrets, but there is no meaningful underlying text. Another theory is that the manuscript is actually a modern fake created by Wilfrid M. Voynich himself. As an antique book dealer, Voynich certainly had the knowledge of what old manuscripts should look like and could have created a fake one. Perhaps Voynich's plan was to sell the fake as a mysterious old book if he received an attractive offer.
The professor refutes all three claims presented in the reading passage, calling into question the credibility and author of an ancient handwritten book- The Voynich manuscript. The script and the contents in this book are not explained to date. However, the reading explains some hypotheses for the origin of the Voynich manuscript. The professor has counter-arguments for each assumption.
First of all, the reading states that there is some resemblance of plant illustrations between 'A Little Herbal'- book by Antony Ascham and the Voynich manuscript and dubious that he might be the author of this handwritten ancient book. The professor denied this by saying that Ascham was a well-known botanist and physician and in his book he demonstrated the common plants of that century and all his works had a solid reference section. This seems unlikely that Antony Ascham was the author of such a detailed, coded, secret document.
Moreover, Edward Kelly was notoriously good at tricking people by saying that the book provides magical power to people, is rejected by the professor. He argues that the real creator of this manuscript really needs to hide some complex information from the sixteenth century, that was documented in the manuscript. In addition, A person who wants to fake people about magical power never needs such complexity as in the ancient manuscript.
Last, the latest dating techniques reveal that the ink used for writings in the manuscript was at least 400 years old rules out the assumption that the author was not Wilfred. M. Voynich. From the evidence, it proved that the vellum and the ink were used 400 years before Voynich lived and hereby the tutor proves the claim is wrong.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 26 in 30
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 13 12
No. of Words: 280 250
No. of Characters: 1395 1200
No. of Different Words: 149 150
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.091 4.2
Average Word Length: 4.982 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.633 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 71 60
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 46 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 32 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.538 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.456 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.462 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.351 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.585 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.097 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 4