Wikipedia:Captions

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This page is part of the Manual of Style, and is considered a guideline for Wikipedia. The consensus of many editors formed the conventions described here, and Wikipedia articles should heed these guidelines. Before making any major changes to these guidelines, please use the discussion page to ensure that your changes reflect consensus.

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This caption for the billboard article describes the sign's ad campaign and provides relevance to the topic.

A caption to an image is a title, a label with several essential purposes: if all are fulfilled, specific formats are a matter of taste, but should be fairly consistent within an article, for the reader's sake. This page is designed as a guideline towards writing good captions; it is not promulgated as a set of inflexible rules.

Caption and picture have a symbiotic relationship. A picture alone may fall flat: together, they thrive. A good caption describes the unseen and draws the eye back to the image. The caption breathes life into the picture by providing context and adding depth. The picture draws attention to the caption, and the caption bridges image and text. The caption helps the reader build a story around the picture. The caption combined with the picture often provides new information not found in the article text. Relevant words in the caption might be Wikilinked.

Not every Wikipedia image needs a caption: some are simply decorative. A very few may genuinely be self-explanatory. If you decide that an image does not need a caption, then please follow the advice at Wikipedia:Alternative text for images to specify appropriate "alt" text.

1 Some criteria for a good caption
2 Special situations
3 Tips for describing pictures
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Some criteria for a good caption

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There are several criteria for a good caption. A good caption

clearly identifies the subject of the picture, without detailing the obvious.
is succinct.
establishes the picture's relevance to the article.
provides context for the picture.
draws the reader into the article.
is either a title, like the title of a book or else consists of one or more complete sentences (in the latter case, it should end with a full stop).

Different people read articles different ways. Some people start at the top and read each word until the end. Others read the first paragraph and scan through for other interesting information, looking specially at pictures and captions. For those readers, even if the information is adjacent in the text, they will not find it unless it is in the caption — but do not tell the whole story in the caption — use the caption to make the reader curious about the subject.

Another way of approaching the job: imagine you're giving a lecture based on the encyclopaedia article, and you're using the image to illustrate the lecture. What would you say while attention is on the image? What do you want your audience to notice in the image, and why? Corollary: if you have got nothing to say, then the image probably does not belong in the article.

[edit] Clear identification of the subject

One of a caption's primary purposes is to identify the subject of the picture. Make sure your caption does that, without leaving readers to wonder what the subject of the picture might be. Be as unambiguous as practical in identifying the subject. What the picture is is important, too. If the illustration is a painting, the painter's Wikilinked name, and even a date give context. Present location may be added in parentheses: (Louvre Museum). Although if the image of the painting is on the page for the artist's biography, wikilinking the artist's name is not needed. Sometimes the date of the image is important: there is a difference between "King Arthur" and "King Arthur in a 19th-century watercolor". If the image depicts the subject of the article, it need not be wikilinked. For instance, if the article is about J. D. Salinger and the image depicts him, his name does not need to be linked.

[edit] Succinctness

Though succinctness is not the same as brevity, it is easy to write a caption too long. Even more than with all good writing, any superfluous word that can be removed from a caption increases its power. More than three lines of text in a caption may be distracting. Sometimes increasing the pixel width of the image brings better balance: more often, superfluous words can be removed from the caption instead. Save some information for the image description page, and put other information in the article itself, but make sure the reader does not miss the essentials in the picture.

[edit] Establishing relevance to the article

A good caption explains why a picture belongs in an article. "The 1965 Ford Mustang introduced the whiz-bang super-speeder" tells us why it is worth the trouble to show a photo of a 1965 Ford Mustang rather than just any of that model car. "It was the only one I could find with a suitable license" probably is not a worthy caption reason. Links to relevant sections within the article may help draw the reader in (see here for how to do this): compare Ebola for an example.

[edit] Providing context for the picture

A picture captures only one moment in time. What happened before and after? What happened outside the frame? For The Last Supper, "Jesus dines with his disciples" tells something, but add "on the eve of his crucifixion" and it tells much more about the significance. Add "With this meal, Jesus established the tradition of Holy Communion" to get more context if you do not cover that in the article. In such a caption the name of the painter and date provide information on the cultural point-of-view of the particular representation.

[edit] Drawing the reader into the article

The caption should lead the reader into the article. For example, in History of the Peerage, a caption for Image:William I of England.jpg might say "William of Normandy overthrew the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, bringing a new style of government." Then the reader gets curious about that new form of government and reads text to learn what it is.

[edit] Complete sentences

Some editors would insist that you ensure that your captions consist of complete sentences. Use a noun (probably the subject of the picture) and a verb. "People playing Monopoly" is not a complete sentence, but "Some people play Monopoly" is. A better caption: "A product of the Great Depression, Monopoly continues to draw people together."

Writing a complete sentence is likely to bring the caption into compliance with other guidelines as well.

However, in order to provide a complete sentence, "is", "was", "were" provide no information. If no active verb completes your thought, try the classic title-and-subtitle style with a colon: "Neoclassicism: Antiquity recreated in an 18th-century mode". Article headings in Scientific American often follow a brief title with a colon, followed by a complete sentence as subtitle: "Chicxolub crater: a bolide brought the Cretaceous to an end." Trying to form a single complete sentence from these strong captions may actually add nothing to aid the reader.

Complete sentences in captions should always end in a period (or other appropriate punctuation). If the caption is not a complete sentence, it generally should not have a period at the end. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style.

[edit] Special situations

Several types of images warrant special treatment:

Company or product logos, where the logo is current, and the article is about the company or product. - no caption needed
Periodic table snippets for each element - no caption needed
Images of Element samples in the element info box - no caption needed
Images of plants and animals, protists etc in info boxes - caption optional
Info box images with mission insignia - no caption needed, but if there is a description of the symbolism, it should be included on the image description page
Other images (especially within standard info boxes) where the purpose of the image is clearly nominative, that is, that the picture serves as the typical example of the subject of the article and offers no further information - no caption needed.
Chemical compound diagrams (as in TNT) could benefit from a mention of the role of the structure in the properties of the compound.
Group portraits of a few people (presumably related to the article) should list the names of the individuals so that readers can identify individuals. Larger groups should have an index photo with numbered silhouettes and a key listing each person's name.

[edit] Tips for describing pictures

Here are some details people might want to know about the picture (all are linkable):

What is noteworthy about the subject of the picture? If there is an article on the subject of the picture, link to it.
For photographs:
- Where was it taken?
- When was it taken?
- Who took it? (Generally, this is only included in the caption if the photographer is notable.)
- Why was it taken?
For works of art:
- Who is the artist?
- What is the medium (oil and canvas/marble/mixed media...)?
- When was the piece completed?
- Where is it displayed?
- What are its dimensions?

Keep in mind that not all of this information needs to be included in the caption, since the image description page should offer more complete information about the picture.