Page Numbering – Roman Numeral Page Numbering

page-numberingroman numerals

I am writing a thesis that contains an abstract and acknowledgements page, but need to number the page numbers using Roman numerals. How would I do this? I don't want to include the title page but would like to start the abstract with roman numeral ii.

Best Answer

If you're using memoir, you can use any page contents with an empty pagestyle for your unnumbered title page, and then use the \frontmatter command to set lowercase Roman numerals as the default page numbers.

In my university's case, since I'm using hyperref and other packages, I've found it's best to let the unnumbered first page be numbered with alph format, the rest of the front matter pages use Roman numbering, and the main matter pages use Arabic numbering. This avoids the dreaded "pdfTeX warning (ext4): destination with the same identifier (name{page.1}) has been already used, duplicate ignored" messages.

Our unnumbered first page includes:

\pagenumbering{alph}
\setcounter{page}{1}
\thispagestyle{empty}

and \frontmatter at the end of the page.

In the main thesis file, we put \mainmatter right before we include the chapter files. Details as of 2011/08/15 at this site (particularly ttuthesis.sty and thesis-manual.tex -- thesis.tex will be updated later).

In response to comments, here's a simple example similar to what I use normally. Since I try to isolate my users from the guts of the style file, I separate out the page layout (my problem, and the graduate school's) with the page contents (their problem).

enter image description here

\documentclass[oneside]{memoir}

\title{My Thesis Title}
\author{Me, The Author}

% Define the (unnumbered) title page layout here
\newcommand{\mytitlepage}{
\pagenumbering{alph}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\beforepartskip
\begin{center}
\thetitle

\theauthor
\end{center}
\afterpartskip
\newpage
}

% Define the abstract page layout (numbered ii) here
\newcommand{\abstractpage}{
\frontmatter
\setcounter{page}{2}
\pagestyle{plain}
\begin{center}
Abstract: \thetitle
\end{center}

\theabstract
\newpage
}

% Define the abstract page contents here
\newcommand{\theabstract}{
Abstract content goes here.
}

\begin{document}
\mytitlepage
\abstractpage
\tableofcontents*
\mainmatter
\chapter{One}
This is chapter 1.
\end{document}
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