What strikes me at first glance is that he seems to believe that whatever manuscripts we have somehow respect Plato's text formatting. All of these manuscripts are between 500 and 1800 years younger than Plato (I suppose that the picture shows either the Parisii or Vaticani papyrus). Didn't this guy read all the wonderful commentaries philologists write in the introduction of modern editions? The treasures of patience needed sometimes to even make sense of the manuscript?
It has nothing to do with the layout, the "stiches" are groups of about 36 letters or 16 syllables. The author acknowledges the possibility of errors in transcriptions.
