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I am writing a very long document in Memoir, and, right at the start, I would like to have a verso (left-facing) "copyright page" before the (recto, right-facing) title page. At the moment, I'm doing this by just inserting a \cleartoverso command right at the start of the document: 

\documentclass[onecolumn,openright,a4paper]{memoir}

% Use very different margins to accentuate recto and verso differences 

\setlrmarginsandblock{5cm}{2.25cm}{*}
\setulmarginsandblock{2.54 cm}{*}{*}

\usepackage{titling}
\pretitle{\begin{flushright}\LARGE}
\posttitle{\par\end{flushright}\vskip 0.5em}

\preauthor{\begin{flushleft}\LARGE \lineskip 0.5em}
\postauthor{\par\end{flushleft}}

\title{A Big Title In A Customised \\maketitle Command }
\author{ A. An Author, A. N. Other University. }
\date{}



\begin{document}
\frontmatter
\cleartoverso
\flushleft
\vspace*{\fill}
\footnotesize
\textbf{I am a copyright notice.}\\
 I am probably very long and boring. I additionally am liable to contain lots of pointless notices about mechanical book retrieval systems that don't really exist any more more. The main point of this block of text is to show you on which side the margins are!\\

\copyright{} 2015 A. An Author. Licensed under the GPL v. 3.14159.

\maketitle
\mainmatter 

% Stuff goes here...

\end{document}

This is suboptimal: the first page in the resultant output is empty, followed by the copyright page and then the title. I would like to have no blank page, copyright page, and then the title -- but with all subsequent chapters opening right, which is the reason I've chosen openright as a class option. However, I essentially don't want the frontmatter opening right!

Is there a better way of doing this, but without the \cleartoverso? Does Memoir have an internal counter I can manipulate to make the first page of the document verso rather than recto?

Mike Renfro
  • 20,550
Landak
  • 373
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    Sorry, I find it a little difficult to understand what page order you're trying to achieve. I would have thought the logical thing to do would be put the \maketitle right after \frontmatter (assuming you want the title page first??? The first page og the book is always (by logic) recto, as it's generally what you see when the book sits on the table. – Brent.Longborough Jul 19 '15 at 17:02
  • Untested, but you can use an openany class option, then use the \openright command to (memoir manual 6.5) to switch when you're ready for chapter content. Alternatively, I'd just post-process the PDF to remove the first page when I was completely done writing. – Mike Renfro Jul 19 '15 at 17:03
  • Sorry -- I'm not being very clear. I'd like the copyright page first, on the verso side, followed by the title page on the lecto side. – Landak Jul 19 '15 at 17:04
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    Keep the blank page, it is needed for printing. Or add the very famous This page is intentionally left blank. – Johannes_B Jul 19 '15 at 17:12
  • Is the concern here with the blank page or its effect on the page numbering? Certainly you can alter the numbering although it will be a bit odd having even pages on the right rather than left side. – cfr Jul 19 '15 at 17:28
  • Why is the blank page required for printing?

    I know how to change page numbering in either the \frontmatter, \mainmatter or \backmatter, but now I'd just like to know how to change the first page in a document from one side to the other.

     – Landak Jul 19 '15 at 17:43
  • I'm sorry, again, but I think you are asking for something that is logically impossible. The first printed page, however you arrive at it, is always recto, – Brent.Longborough Jul 19 '15 at 17:57
  • Sorry, that includes any "printed" empty pages – Brent.Longborough Jul 19 '15 at 18:36
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    I agree with the other comments, about logical impossibility. A verso is logically even numbered (page 2, etc) which makes no sense without a page 1. As noted, perhaps "this page intentionally left blank." Another possibility is to forget about memoir's frontmatter altogether, and manually write the code so that the page numbring and format (Arabic, Roman, etc.) is under your control. Best practice (I think) would be to use a "half title" (there is also a naughty name for it) on page 1, which does the same thing as "intentionally blank" except it has the title alone. – RobtA Jul 19 '15 at 23:53
  • Thank you -- I'll do that. What is a half title, and even more interestingly, what's its naughty name? – Landak Jul 20 '15 at 07:17
  • Logical impossibility? Sometimes one wants to produce a document for use on a screen only... no printing involved. In this case, the blank first page is really annoying. – mforbes Jul 08 '21 at 20:48
  • A good solution is given in https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/140329/6903. – mforbes Jul 08 '21 at 20:57

0 Answers0