For example, the recital's pitiful (7)
I believe the answer is:
article
'for example the' is the definition.
('the' is the English definite article)
'recital's pitiful' is the wordplay.
'pitiful' indicates an anagram (the letters in a poor or pitiful condition).
'recital' is an anagram of 'ARTICLE'.
(Other definitions for article that I've seen before include "account in the Financial Times" , "Feature - item" , "Newspaper feature or a separate thing" , "Object - piece of writing" , "thing required" .)