3 ms·

I would guess it's to justify the text. People would also add/remove unnecessary vowels to fit a line better.

• dhosek 4y ago
  That seems likely. Some early typefaces included wider and narrower versions of some letters to enable justification. Arabic typography does this by allowing, e.g., ﻧـﺪ in place of ﻧﺪ (not a real word, in case you’re puzzling over it, I know more about the letters than the language), where there is an extension to the connecting line between letters. I think, that Gutenberg’s type had multiple versions of letters for this purpose, but I’m going by vague decades-old memories now.