Front matter is everything printed before the first chapter of a book: the title page, copyright page, dedication, epigraph, table of contents, foreword and preface. It is numbered separately from the main text, in lower-case roman numerals, and most books use four or five of these elements rather than all of them.
British editors call the same section the preliminary matter, or prelims. American style guides and every self-publishing platform call it front matter. The two terms mean exactly the same thing, and this page uses front matter throughout. Everything after the final chapter is back matter.
What Counts as Front Matter
The dividing line is function, not position. As the Chicago Manual of Style's editors put it, any section that helps a reader navigate the book belongs at the front, while anything that comments on or supports the text belongs at the back. That is why the table of contents is front matter and the index is not.
The elements you are likely to meet:
- Half title. A page carrying the title alone, with no author or publisher. It is the first page of the book. See half title page vs title page.
- Title page. Title, subtitle, author, and publisher or imprint.
- Copyright page. The title page verso. Carries the copyright notice, ISBN, printer details and, for US books, the Library of Congress record. The Library of Congress defines its Cataloging-in-Publication data as "the bibliographic record that appears printed on the verso of the book's title page", so that placement is fixed rather than conventional. See what goes on a copyright page for the full list of elements.
- Dedication. A short personal inscription.
- Epigraph. A quotation setting the tone for the book. Quoting someone else's work here can carry permissions obligations, which is covered in dedication vs epigraph vs acknowledgements.
- Table of contents. Headed simply Contents. It lists front matter, chapter titles and back matter sections, but not subheadings. Most print novels omit it, but an ebook cannot.
- Foreword. Written by someone other than the author, usually as a recommendation.
- Preface. Written by the author, about the book as a book: how it came to be written, its scope, its method.
- Acknowledgements. Thanks and credits. As of its 18th edition the Chicago Manual of Style prefers these in the back matter for most books, a change it records in its own list of what changed in the 18th edition. Note that two different things share this name: personal thanks, and copyright acknowledgements crediting rights holders for quoted material.
A novel typically uses far fewer of these than a work of non-fiction. Title page, copyright, dedication and contents will carry most fiction.
Foreword, preface and introduction are three different things and are not interchangeable, and a prologue is a fourth, covered in prologue vs preface vs foreword. Yale University Press states the distinction bluntly: a preface "is entirely different from a foreword or an introduction and cannot replace or be replaced by either." An introduction, in particular, usually is not front matter at all. If it forms part of the argument, it begins the text proper on arabic page 1.
Why Front Matter Uses Roman Numerals
Front matter is paginated in lower-case roman numerals and the main text restarts at arabic 1. Every style authority agrees on this, but few explain why, and the reason is purely practical.
New Hart's Rules gives it directly: roman prelims exist "so that any late changes to the content or extent of the prelims will not affect the pagination of the main text." Front matter is the last part of a book to settle. A foreword arrives late, a dedication gets added, a contents page runs to two pages instead of one. If the prelims shared one sequence with the body, every one of those changes would repaginate the entire book and invalidate the index. Keeping them in a separate roman sequence isolates that churn.
Two details that follow from this and often surprise people:
- Every front matter page has a number even when none is printed. The half title is page i whether or not you can see it. See what a folio is for how page numbers are set and suppressed, and why the roman sequence exists.
- Front matter sections conventionally open on a recto, the right-hand page, which always carries an odd number. New Hart's Rules is firmest about the contents page: it "always falls on a recto."
For ebooks, most of this stops applying. Reflowable formats have no fixed pages, so recto and verso are not meaningful, and digital editions often reorder elements, moving copyright information to the back.
Setting Front Matter Up in Deckle
Deckle offers seven front matter page types: Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Epigraph, Foreword, Preface and Table of Contents. Add them from the + button at the top of the Binder, under the Front Matter menu.
There is no half title type, and no colophon type. If you want a half title, add it as an ordinary document.
Two behaviours worth knowing:
- The Binder order is the book order. Deckle exports these pages in whatever sequence they appear in the Binder, so positioning them is the whole job. For the sequence itself, see setting up front matter and back matter in the right order.
- Roman numbering is automatic. Deckle numbers everything before your first chapter in roman numerals and restarts at arabic 1 at the chapter, matching print convention, with a toggle in Advanced print settings if you want the older continuous numbering instead. This is worth checking when you prepare the manuscript for export.
Deckle treats Acknowledgments as back matter, which matches both trade fiction practice and Chicago's current recommendation.
Common Mistakes
- Assuming there is one correct order. There is not. Chicago places the contents page before the foreword and preface; New Hart's Rules places it after them. Chicago pairs the epigraph with the dedication near the front; New Hart's Rules puts it last in the prelims, immediately before the text. Both are correct within their own tradition. Pick one and stay consistent.
- Treating the introduction as front matter. If it argues, it is chapter-level text and starts at arabic page 1.
- Calling a foreword a preface. A foreword is by someone else. If you wrote it, it is a preface.
- Listing subheadings in the contents. Chapter titles and major sections only.
- Padding the end of the book with blank pages to round out the count. Print-on-demand services add and reserve pages themselves, and IngramSpark asks explicitly that you do not pad.
- Expecting recto rules to hold in an ebook. They do not.
FAQ
Q: Does a novel need all of these pages? A: No. Only the title page and, where a contents page is expected, the contents are treated as essentially required by publisher guidelines. Everything else is optional.
Q: Do acknowledgements go at the front or the back? A: The back, for most books. The Chicago Manual of Style moved to preferring back matter in its 18th edition, and trade fiction already worked that way. Front matter remains reasonable when you are crediting substantial contributors such as translators. Placed at the back, they sit immediately after the final chapter and read as a kind of epilogue.
Q: Is the front matter counted in the page count? A: Yes. Those pages exist and are numbered, they simply use a separate roman sequence.
Q: What is the difference between front matter and prelims? A: Nothing. Prelims, or preliminary matter, is the British term for the same section.
Q: Where does the copyright page go? A: On the back of the title page, always. This is the one placement no source disputes, and in the US the Library of Congress defines its CIP record as appearing on the title page verso.