6.7 \frontmatter, \mainmatter, \backmatter

Synopsis, one or more of:

\frontmatter
...
\mainmatter
...
\backmatter
...

Format a book class document differently according to which part of the document is being produced. All three commands are optional.

Traditionally, a book’s front matter contains such things as the title page, an abstract, a table of contents, a preface, a list of notations, a list of figures, and a list of tables. (Some of these front matter pages, such as the title page, are traditionally not numbered.) The back matter may contain such things as a glossary, notes, a bibliography, and an index.

The \frontmatter command makes the pages numbered in lowercase roman, and makes chapters not numbered, although each chapter’s title appears in the table of contents; if you use other sectioning commands here, use the *-version (see Sectioning).

The \mainmatter command changes the behavior back to the expected version, and resets the page number.

The \backmatter command leaves the page numbering alone but switches the chapters back to being not numbered.

See Larger book template, for an example using these three commands.