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INDEXIA BLOG

Handling Preambles and Roman Numeral Pagination in Your Book Index

Indexia Team•

When creating a book index, one of the trickiest challenges is handling preamble pages—the front matter that often uses roman numeral pagination (i, ii, iii, iv...) before the main content begins with arabic numerals (1, 2, 3...).

Indexia now handles this automatically, ensuring your index references the correct pages throughout your entire document.

The Preamble Problem

Many books follow a traditional publishing structure:

  • Front matter (title page, copyright, table of contents, preface): Pages i–xiv
  • Main content (chapters, body text): Pages 1–350
  • Back matter (appendices, bibliography, index): Pages 351–380

When indexing such a book, you need your references to match what readers will see in the printed or digital version. An index entry pointing to "page 5" should take readers to arabic numeral page 5, not the fifth physical page of the PDF (which might be roman numeral page v).

How Indexia Handles Preambles

During project creation, you'll now see options to specify your preamble:

  1. Enable preamble handling: Toggle this on if your book has roman numeral front matter
  2. Preamble start page: The first physical page of your preamble (typically page 1 of the PDF)
  3. Preamble end page: The last roman numeral page before main content begins

Indexia then:

  • Extracts terms from both preamble and main content
  • Labels preamble page references with roman numerals (e.g., "xi")
  • Labels main content references with arabic numerals (e.g., "127")
  • Displays both correctly in your index and exports

Setting Up Your Project

When you upload your PDF:

  1. On the Project Details step, look for the "Preamble" section
  2. Check "My book has a preamble with roman numerals"
  3. Enter the page range—for example, if your PDF has 14 pages of front matter:
    • Preamble start: 1
    • Preamble end: 14
  4. Set your main content start page (where arabic page "1" begins in your PDF)

Indexia handles the offset calculation automatically. If your main content starts on PDF page 15, that becomes page 1 in your index.

Viewing Preamble References

In the index editor, you'll see terms with mixed pagination:

Introduction, ix, xi–xii Chapter 1, 1, 15–18, 42

The roman numerals indicate references from your front matter, while arabic numerals point to main content. This matches exactly what readers will see in the finished book.

Export with Correct Pagination

When you export your index—whether to Word, RTF, or CDXF format—all page references maintain their correct notation. No manual conversion needed.

Best Practices

  • Verify your page ranges: Open your PDF and confirm where roman numerals end and arabic begin
  • Include your table of contents: The TOC often contains valuable index terms
  • Check preface content: Prefaces frequently introduce key concepts worth indexing

Getting Started

Ready to index a book with front matter? Create your project now and enable preamble handling during setup. Watch the project creation tutorial to see it in action.

Preamble handling is one of several new features in our January 2026 release. See the full feature announcement for everything new in Indexia.