What to Include and Not Include in the Front Matter

A large amount of the front matter content that appears in typeset USGS documents is static, or boilerplate, text. Further, several components of the front matter are duplicated in the final PDF; for example, the document title and authors appear more than once on different pages in the front matter. eXtyles can automatically generate much of the front matter boilerplate content, and in an XML workflow it is not best practice to duplicate content (that is, have the same thing appear in more than one place). Because of this, when using eXtyles the front matter in the Word documents is greatly simplified.

Include

The associated example shows how the front matter of a typical USGS document is organized in eXtyles. Note that the only elements that are retained are:

USGS logo (not required, but can be retained if desired)
Secondary Identification information, if provided
document title
document authors

All other front matter content is deleted from the document.

Do Not Include

Boilerplate Content

Boilerplate content–that is, content that remains static across documents, such as information about the Secretary of the Interior and Director–can be added to the XML during export. Because of this, boilerplate content should be removed from the Word document.

In USGS documents, boilerplate content includes:

U.S Department of the Interior Secretary and USGS Director information
USGS address
USGS "for more information" content
USGS copyright statement
ISBNs and/or ISSNs

Suggested Citation

Following XML best practice to avoid duplicate content, the suggested citation should be removed from the Word document. It can be constructed from existing metadata (e.g., publication year) and information in the Word document (e.g., title and authors).

Table of Contents / List of Figures and Tables

The document's table of contents is best generated from the XML during layout. Because of this, remove entirely the tables of contents and lists of figures and tables from the Word documents.

Front Matter Structure