Page (paper) from an earlier meaning "to create a row of vines that form a rectangle." The Latin word "pagina" derives from the verb "pangere," which means to stake out boundaries when planting vineyards. In a book, the side of a leaf one reads first is called the recto page, and the back side of that leaf is called the verso page. In a spread, one reads the verso page first and then reads the recto page of the next leaf. In English-language books, the recto page is on the right and the verso page is on the left. By modern convention,
Canons of page construction Canons of page construction The canons of page construction are historical reconstructions, based on careful measurement of extant books and what is known of the mathematics and engineering methods of the time, of manuscript-framework methods that may have been used in Medieval- or Renaissance-era book design to divide a page into pleasing proportions. Since their popularization in the 20th century, these canons have influenced modern-day book design in the ways that page proportions, margins and type areas (print spaces) of books are constructed. The notion of canons, or laws of form, of book page construction was popularized by Jan Tschichold