Coptic Codicology. Text structure and readability

This short articles deals with specific features of Coptic writing.From the beginning, Coptic scribal practice was modelled on Greek practice, including the repertoires of punctuation marks, abbreviations (Christian nomina sacra), devices for adjusting the length of a line, means of paragraphing, and so on. Apart from adding native Egyptian letters to the Greek alphabet, the only innovation was the use of a sign (normally either a horizontal 'superlinear stroke' or a dot (jinkim - or 'way of movement' - to mark any syllable containing no vowel, a type of syllable that is frequent in Coptic. Punctuation serves to delimit paragraphs, sentences, clauses, phrases and sometimes also words (mostly in the sense of a 'phonological word'), without there necessarily being a clear correlation between the form of a mark and its function. Space is sometimes used for separating units of text, or dividing 'words'. These and other characterized are briefly described.