User:Snazzyricotta/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Recto and verso

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article to evaluate because we discussed the terms recto and verso in class and they are important terms to understand in the study of manuscripts.

I thought that the article did a good job of defining the terms in a clear and understandable way. It also provided valuable background information about the etymology and the usage of these terms over time. The diagrams showing which page was recto and which was verso in left-to-right language books versus right-to-left language books were very helpful and accompanied the text well.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The lead section includes an introductory sentence defining the terms recto and verso. The lead also introduces some of the topics to be mentioned later in the article, such as the kinds of bound items that these terms would be used to refer to. The lead sentence is a bit confusing to read, making it difficult to visualize which side of the paper is recto and which is verso, but the diagrams on the right side of the page help make the distinction more clear. The paragraph following the lead sentence goes into more detail about the binding of folios in double-sided printing, but this section is also a bit confusingly worded and it is difficult to visualize what the author is describing.

The content is relevant to the topic, discussing the etymology of the terms recto and verso as well as their usage across history for different forms of printing. The content seems fairly up to date, though the most recent source cited was from 2012. While the article discusses the differences in the usage of the terms for manuscripts written in right-to-left scripts, this is only briefly mentioned, and the rest of the content primarily deals with books written in left-to-right scripts. It would be helpful to maybe add an image of a manuscript written in a right-to-left script, as the only image included is an example of a book written in left-to-right script.

The article has a fairly neutral tone; it presents the definition of the terms and background information concerning their usage without attempting to convince the reader of a particular argument or idea. The content does seem to favor the study of these terms and of codicology as a whole from a Western viewpoint, wherein manuscripts or books would be read from left-to-right.

The information in the article is backed up by scholarly books, though the most recent book was published in 2012, so the sources are not the most recent. Most of the sources are from Western scholars, in books that provide a general overview to printmaking or the elements of the book. More sources could be included from more recent journal articles or books from a wider array of viewpoints, perhaps ones discussing manuscripts from other regions outside of Europe.

On the talk page, the article is part of the Typography, Classical Greece and Rome, and Books projects. It is rated of low importance for Typography and Classical Greece and Rome. In 2011, a comment was left in the talk page noting that a section should be included on etymology, which was resolved. Since then, suggestions have been left concerning reading order, in which it is noted that an error was made in the content of the article's third paragraph, as well as on the term 'TERGO', which is another word for verso. None of the more recent suggestions have been resolved.

Overall, the article does a good job at defining the terms recto and verso with diagrams to support understanding. The article could be improved by editing the lead section about double-sided printing to be easier to read and by updating the content with more recent sources that also include less Eurocentric viewpoints. I would say that the article is a bit underdeveloped as its content has not been updated to reflect newer scholarship or non-European points of view.