How do I remove spacing from before the table of contents in memoir class?

Question

I am using memoir class to create a collection of short stories, and the default space before the table of contents and chapter titles is quite large. I have seen several posts on this site that show how to remove this space for all chapters, but I want to remove it just for the table of contents, keeping it for the chapters. How would I do this?

Answer 1

An improvement of Brent's answer might be in avoiding to look for the value of \beforechapskip:

\frontmatter
\begingroup
\setlength{\beforechapskip}{0pt} % or any other dimension
\tableofcontents*
\endgroup

\mainmatter

That value of \beforechapskip will be used only inside the group and will be restored to the previous one when the group ends.

Notice the * after \tableofcontents, that will remove the table of contents entry from the table of contents (it's unclear to me why the default is to include the entry).

Answer 2

This should do what (I think) you want:

...
\setlength{\beforechapskip}{0pt}
\tableofcontents
...
\mainmatter
\setlength{\beforechapskip}{12pc}
...

To help you in finding a good chapter style, and to avoid "existential design anguish", you may find it worthwhile spending fifteen minutes reading the memoir manual section 6.5, under "Chapter Styles".

You may also want to read Memoir Chapter Styles.

Memoir includes a set of pre-built chapter styles, which you could use either alone, or in conjunction with the previous solution.

You can even switch chapter styles in the middle of the document (or, more specifically for your case, between the TOC and the remainder).