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I just wrote the preface to my book and I made it a \chapter, but now the preface is Chapter 1 of the book, which is not what I desire. I am using the memoir document class. Does anyone know how to make this preface chapter not really be a chapter?

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2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Use \chapter* instead of \chapter.

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It's still showing up as Chapter 1... Even with \chapter*. Btw, what is the meaning of the * in LaTeX commands? I have seen so many commands with stars but I haven't yet figured out what it means! – Peteris Krumins Jun 3 '11 at 16:43
1  
@Peteris No, it doesn't. The * following some commands denotes a "variation" of that command (what is varied depends on the command). Beware that a chapter introduced with \chapter*{Title} won't automatically go in the table of contents. – egreg Jun 3 '11 at 16:46
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@egreg, @lockstep, oh sorry, it must have been the old ToC because I ran LaTeX just once. I just cleared the whole document directory and ran LaTeX twice and now it shows up appropriately without chapter number (actually it shows unnumbered in ToC but \sections have number 0.x). I also moved the preface to \frontmatter. Before it was in \mainmatter. – Peteris Krumins Jun 3 '11 at 17:03
1  
@Peteris: To get rid of the goofy section numbers in your preface, do the same trick with your sections (and subsections, etc) in your preface that you did with chapter: Use the starred version of those commands: \section*, \subsection*, etc. – David Hammen Jun 3 '11 at 17:13
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And to get the preface into the table of contents (if that is your desire), you may need to use \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Preface}. – David Hammen Jun 3 '11 at 17:16
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up vote 14 down vote

A preface is usually set in the front matter. If you say

\frontmatter
<front matter>

\chapter{Preface}
<text of the preface>

\mainmatter
<main matter>

the Preface will be set as an unnumbered chapter.

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