Book & Print Tools › Front matter block generator

The opening of a Markdown book usually has a metadata block with the title, subtitle and author, followed by short pieces such as a dedication and acknowledgements. Writing them by hand is easy to get slightly wrong.

Fill in the title and whatever else you have. The tool writes a YAML title block between two lines of three dashes, then adds a Dedication and an Acknowledgements section when you provide the text. Paste the result at the very top of your manuscript.

MarkdownBooks reads the title, subtitle, author and date from this block to make the title page. If you leave it out, the title is taken from your first heading or the file name instead, and the converter tells you that it did so.

How to use it

1. Enter the title and author.
2. Add a dedication and acknowledgements if you want them.
3. Paste the block at the top of your manuscript.

Worked example

Creates the title block and a Dedication section.

Questions

Where does the block go?

At the very top of the file, before any other text.

What if my title has a colon?

Wrap it in quotes in the output.

Is the block required?

No, but it gives you a proper title page.

Can I add more fields?

Yes, such as lang or keywords, though only some are used by every format.

Turn your Markdown into a book

Related tools