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Now let's have a closer look: this is a particular sign used for marking the prosodic breaks (Sw. vituo) separating the verses (Sw. vipande) in each line. The shape is that of an inverted heart, commonly filled with red ink or left fully black. They could be compared to punctuation marks such as commas.
The presence of these signs in the manuscript shows how the paper was meant to be a guide on how to read the text rhythmically and where to pause. When Roman script was introduced for typing Swahili poetry, verses started being written one on top of the other, as a quatrain, and this ornamental and prosodic inverted heart was abandoned.