Order of the pages in the front matter of a book

Question

Following "A few notes on book design" from Peter Wilson (author of the memoir class) the order of the pages of the front matter is:

1. Half-title page
2. Blank
3. Title page
4. Copyright page
5. Dedication
6. Blank
7. ToC
8. LoF
9. LoT
10. Forewords
11. Preface
12. Aknowledg(e)ments
13. Introduction
14. Abreviations

Again for the case of my master's thesis I have a few questions: Where should I include the Abstract ? Item 12 'introduction' should be there if the introduction is not part of the main matter which is clearly not the case in a scientific writting.

So I was thinking about replacing that by the abstract. But at this location the abstract seems to be a bit "hidden" in the middle of all these pages.

So my second idea would be to put it just after the LoT. But in don't know if this is optimal.

My layout, removing what I think are unnecessary parts would then be:

1. Title page
2. Blank
3. Title page (only the title, nothing else)
4. Blank
5. Dedication
6. blank
7. ToC
8. LoF
9. LoT
10. Abstract
11. Preface
12. Aknowledg(e)ments
13. Abreviations
14. and then start the first numbered chapter "Introduction"

What do you think ?

Answer 1

Allowed question or not, I'll make some suggestions.

• Half-title pages (displaying nothing but the main title of a book) were introduced to protect the main title page, as Peter Wilson correctly states. Today, this is often achieved by dust jackets. If you still want to include a half-title page, don't put it after the title page.

• If your abstract is formatted as an (unnumbered) chapter, putting it before the preface is surely an option. As an alternative (or in case of special formatting), you could place it before the ToC or even before the dedication.