[Solved] Front Matter Styles and Formatting

[Hagar Delest]

I am trying to prepare an MS for Createspace so would like no page numbers on front matter or pages with the title of each part (Part One, etc), or in the back matter.

I read another post in this forum and followed instructions, giving each page in my Front Matter a different page style, each with NO headers/footers. When I add footers to the actual book i.e. Chapter 1, I get footers in all the front matter, too - help, please! I am nearly bald from tearing my hair out.

Many thanks in advance & may all blessings come your way, or at least a good weekend, best wishes

[RoryOF]

See, firstly, just which page styles you are using. Use /Format /Styles and Formatting, press 4th icon from left to display Page Styles, them select "Applied Styles" from the dropdown in the bottom bar of that window. It may be sufficient to right click on the front matter pages styles and select Modify, then turn off the checkbox to use footer on the Footer tab.

However, if you are getting footers to all pages when you insert a footer to a text page, then your page styles are not all they should be; it might be simpler if you dummied the text - replace all characters with x - and uploaded the file to the Forum, so we can see what has gone wrong. (Find and Replace, Find . (full stop), replace x, drop More Options and select Regular Expressions, press Replace all. Do this ONLY on a COPY of your file, or you will lose all your work. You have been warned!)

How do you start a Chapter - on its own page, typically a Right page? Usually no need for a running page header if so, and page number might be inserted centred in a footer. Other text pages can typically be left page Heater containing page number and book name, right page header containing Chapter title and page number. Back matter of Appendices, Bibliography, Index etc is typically set as the text pages, with similar running headers and page numbers, with Chapter titles replaced by Appendix or Index etc (as appropriate). Blank padding pages at the end, inserted to cope bring the page count up to the desired multiple are left blank.

[Gruff18]

First of all, Rory, many thanks for your reply (love your avatar!).

I start a new chapter wherever it lands, sometimes on a left page. All front matter save copyright info is on a right page. I use published books for my model.

Will upload the Copy of my MS as advised to see what I'm doing wrong. I'm not in a hurry, btw. Again, *really* appreciate your help.

Best wishes.

[Gruff18]

Am attaching a truncated version of the dummied MS, basically front & back matter and 2 chapters, as I can only upload 128kb, perhaps because I'm new... there's also a section I added to the first chapter (pg11) as I thought page numbering worked in OO as it (doesn't) in Word - I can't get rid of it.

Also, in dummying the doc, OO said undo was disabled. Is that for the dummy doc only?

Sorry for all the questions! Many thanks.

PS I have noticed in the dummy file that my formatting styles created for front & back matter have disappeared...

[RoryOF]

I look forward to seeing your layout and will adjust it as appropriate.

Normally I format a book for print - I have double sided printers and bookbind as a hobby.

There are many sources for book layout; who can say who is right and who wrong? Those I use most regularly are

Chicago Manual of Style - a very very long read (1600 pages?) - solves all problems

New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide (useful, as the Chicago, for tricky points, such as multilingual texts - much shorter than Chicago)

Robert Bringhurst: The Elements of Typographic Style (a great read even if you don't do all he says)

and one I return to repeatedly

Oliver Simon: Introduction to Typography (a war edition Penguin - very concise, although dated by modern standards)

Of these, Simon and an old edition of Hart's Rules are my standby texts.

The important thing is to have a nice output; adherence to normal conventions is a safe starting point, but if one has a vision (I haven't) then one can depart from these conventions.

Depending on the publisher's house rules, normally all front matter pages are counted in lower case roman, although much of the front matter may not show printed page numbers - extended text in front matter - Preface, Foreward, Intro - will have the numbers in l.c. roman. The main text will then be numbered, normally from 1 in Arabic numbers; this numbering will continue to the back matter (appendices and Index).

Single pages in front matter (Title, copyright, etc) will not have displayed page numbers although they are counted in the l.c. roman numbering; front matter text blocks may not have displayed page numbers on their first pages, although their body text pages will; this will often depend on how the book Chapter pages are displayed, as the Front matter text blocks will often use the same or closely similar style to Chapter pages.

Some publishers do number sequentially from the first page of the book in Arabic numbers (same display conventions as above, however) not using l.c. romans at all.

Will look at your text later - off out now for shopping and gallivanting.

[Gruff18]

Thank you for such a fascinating reply. Books are more complicated than we realise, even when we've grown up surrounded by them. I think we need a novel with a bookbinder as a protagonist...

My first novel was published last year and I have been using that publisher's house style or rather hoping to: though the page numbers are continual, I was hoping to show no numbers on all the pages up to the chapters themselves, no numbers on the 'Part One' pages, or the back matter. I had also hoped to do different headers but this could be beyond me. Perhaps I am having problems because I'm working in RTF rather than ODT.....

<off out now for shopping and gallivanting

Gallivanting is a MUST! Hope you enjoy yourself!

There is no rush at all, I am still making revisions to the final draft but being a perfectionist this page number/styles thing has been bugging me... must learn to ignore tasks until it is time to attempt to accomplish them.

Have a great weekend!

[RoryOF]

I advise working in .odt rather than .rtf - OO's RTF support is patchy at best. If one must work in RTF, Windows Notepad or Windows Wordpad (probably this) may be best.

Try the attached file. I normally place each Chapter into an OO Section, with a different coloured background. To start a new Chapter, click in the space between chapters and press Ctrl 1 (or apply Heading 1 style to that paragraph mark. If you wish to insert the new chapter into its own Section, highlight the Chapter Number line that now appears and /Insert /Section. set other Section parameters as you wish.

To remove the page number from the preliminaries pages, highlight a number and press Delete. To remove the Header line completely from all Preliminary pages, /Format /Styles and Formatting, press 4th icon from left, right click Preliminaries, select Modify and uncheck Header checkbox on the Header tab.

To identify which page style is being used for the current page (where cursor is), look about 1/4 way across Status bar and you will see it displayed.

[RoryOF]

A quick partial analysis of your file. The first page alone is First Page style; all subsequent pages are Default style. Page style for the current page (where cursor is) is shown on the Status Bar (bottom bar of OO) about 1/4 way across.

[RoryOF]

I forgot to say: in /File /Properties, Description tab, Title, enter the title of the book. This is a field, and is used in the example I gave to insert the Title into the lefthand page Header.

[RoryOF]

These documents are informative
Writer for students (several languages)

This document covers much the same ground as the previous document. It will be helpful for those writing a book
http://documentation.openoffice.org/whitepapers/Creating_large_documents_with_OOo.odt

[Gruff18]

Thank you very much, Rory, for your incisive replies - I have since changed the MS to .odt. After all I downloaded OO so I wouldn't have to deal with Word, which besides having to rent, needs a good exorcism to boot; so no point to .rtf, esp. as I will export as PDF.

Will try your suggestions.

Can I ask one more thing: I would like to make a character a bookbinder. For research, can you recommend a reasonbly priced print book?

Thanks & have a great weekend.

Best, G18

[RoryOF]

A quick reply (on my way out to a meeting): Google for "philip smith bookbinder"; he is a master bookbinder; Look in particular at the illustrations to see what can be achieved - I am most definitely not in that class!

Works on bookbinding:
Douglas Cockerell: Bookbinding and the care of Books - dated but on Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26672

[Gruff18]

Cheers, me dear

[Gruff18]

Hi, Rory - I read all the info you gave me, but I am still having page number/styles problems.

Created a new document. When I did the manual page break I ticked the style I wanted - blank pages for front matter, the first page of the actual novel with a page number footer, brilliant!

Until I pasted my content in. From about page 16, it reverted straight back to 'default' style. Tried selecting the offending pages and double-clicking the style I wanted. Nothing. I even tried doing manual page break for the amount of pages the chapter has - would get tedious for a 386 page book - no dice.

I am beginning to think I am cursed. Can I show you the doc as I did last time, to see what's gone wrong?

I don't understand why page number formatting is so complicated. I started using OO because Word is impossible. But it should be simpler to get page numbers how you want them.

Anyroad, many thanks in advance.

[RoryOF]

On page 16 (or whatever page it actually is) Right click on the first paragraph of the text and select Paragraph from the popup. On the Text flow tab remove the checkmarks from Insert and With Page Style under the Breaks section. Best to work on a copy of your file, just in case.

Edit: The page header is not a line of text - think of it as a page decorator.

Page numbering in OO is very simple once one sheds ideas of how other applications do it.

[Gruff18]

Actually I think I might have sorted it, by applying right page/left page styles... labour-intensive but seems to work... will mark this thread solved if it does

[RoryOF]

By applying Right/Left page styles you are changing the page style used, which page style was causing the problem. Almost certainly the first line of text on that changed page had a setting that caused the difficulty.

[Bill]

I read another post in this forum and followed instructions, giving each page in my Front Matter a different page style, each with NO headers/footers. When I add footers to the actual book i.e. Chapter 1, I get footers in all the front matter, too...

That's one bad thing that happens when saving in the RTF file format. Page styles can't be saved in RFT files. I suggest you download Rory's sample file, save it in RTF format, then do a page-by-page comparison of the ODT file and the RTF file. Trying to work with RTF files in AOO or LO is a complete waste of time if you care anything about the page layouts.

[Gruff18]

Thank you everyone for your help, it really is appreciated!