Originally Posted by
Cangooner
Congrats on the Noodler! I have a couple and really enjoy them both. They are *very* different, but both enjoyable in their own way.
And who says they weren't writing on lines? :) I'll try to nip a full-on mediaevalist rant in the bud here, but there definitely were a number of systems used for putting lines on pages of parchment/vellum. Sometimes lines were very lightly drawn in using a lead or silver stylus, or a "hard point" which embossed a faint line, or even using a wheel to pierce tiny holes along a line. In a nutshell, the fancier or more expensive the manuscript, the more likely it was to be lined. And for really top end manuscripts, quite elaborate systems and formulae for layout were developed.
The image I posted earlier is from an indenture recording an arbitrated settlement to a land dispute in Shropshire, England. So while it was an official document and important in a local sense, it wasn't the kind of thing that someone would spend a ton of time on re the layout. So the lines wander a bit, but not too bad, all things considered.