Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Captions

We've seen three options for formatting the picture so far:

1. Thumbnail with no caveat about the font size
2. Thumbnail with caveat about the font size
3. Full size image

I tried the third option first when previewing the first edition of the page and it looked potentially confusing with the double frame and image text just like the caption text, so I went for the first option which prompted a lengthy addition to the caption - which is then not a concise caption as recommended by the text immediately to its left.

Perhaps the thumbnail size was too small. (I'd only taken the default. The picture is 279px wide.) Perhaps the thumbnail icon is too obscure. -- ke4roh 11:38, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Mega caption

Graner poses over the dead body of Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner; a small patch of blood can be seen on his right temple and his eyes are sealed closed with tape. According to Spc. Jason Kenner's testimony, al-Jamadi was brought to the prison by Navy SEALs in good heath; Kenner says he saw that al-Jamadi looked extensively bruised when he was brought out of the showers, dead. According to Kenner a "battle" took place among CIA and military interrogators over who should dispose the body. Captain Donald Reese, company commander of 372nd Military Police Company, gave testimony about al-Jamadi's death, saying that he saw the dead prisoner. Reese was quoted as saying that "I was told that when he was brought in, he was combative, that they took him up to the room and during the interrogation he passed ... (the body) was bleeding from the head, nose, mouth." Reese stated that the corpse was locked in a shower room overnight and the next day was fitted with an intravenous drip. The body was then autopsied, concluding that the cause of death was a blood clot from trauma. Reese stated that this was an attempt to hide what occurred from other inmates; many believe it was part of a cover-up to hide the death from the outside world.

How big should captions get: Charles Graner? — Matt 04:12, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Shorter than that! A caption's job is not to tell the whole story, just to let the picture tell the story and lead the reader to the article for details.

Manadel al-Jamadi, allegedly combative, was bruised in the shower and died of a resultant blood clot. Graner gives signs of approval.

And the rest can go in the story.-- ke4roh 10:25, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

To be more complete: The information is excellent for the photo's description page because it gives detailed background. So much as the information relates to Graner, it should be included in the body of the Graner article. A caption should ideally be one sentence. If the information is too cumbersome for one, two will suffice. Three is getting long, and four is typically bordering on the absurd. Try to condense the sentences to give the most essential information in the shortest space. See the Marshall, Texas article for examples of longer, but still reasonable, captions. -- ke4roh 15:21, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

If a photo is subject matter in an article, as in this case, a long description is justified, but it may be better to make the photo with long description a separate section, with the text not a caption but regular text.--Patrick 21:54, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Short captions

Some have brought up the subject of short captions like "Broad Street Station, London, 1865" (under Image:Broad street station 1865.png on the train station article). When I wrote captions for a printed book, they insisted on complete sentences. I've never found a caption like that in National Geographic Magazine, either. We should strive for excellence in our captions by providing background information - filling in the unseen and giving context for the picture. Why was this picture chosen for the article on train stations, for example? Was it the first? Is it typical? There is more to putting a picture in an article than simply declaring the subject of the picture. The act requires tying the picture to the article through the caption. -- ke4roh 21:13, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)

Establishing relevance

We've had a controversy over the captions for Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The images are portraits of historical figures involved in controversies that led to the amendment. Objections were raised to lengthy captions that described the specific controversies. I think those captions were excessive. It is only necessary to establish the existence and broad nature of the connection between the subject of the image and the subject of the article. This is enough for the reader to find the right part of the article text for details. Since, in this case, the images themselves contained nothing more that was relevant to the article, the single sentence establishing relevance was all that was necessary. 81.168.80.170 21:19, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My feelings on the issue are: 1. At most, one sentence should be included in the caption. Anything further should go in the main article. 2. All pictures do not need detailed captions. In a well-written article, the text adjacent to the article may explain the picture sufficiently. If a reader wonders about the relevance of the caption, let him or her actually read the article. 3. When the article is on a particular topic, a caption depicting the subject need not have anything longer than a few words. For example: consider the article Nikola Tesla. The caption for the first picture is more than enough. 4. Lengthy captions are necessary only when the caption is not explained in full by the adjacent text. They should used when there is something extraordinary demonstrated by the picture, not thoroughly explored in the main body of the article. Consider, for example, the first picture in Pope John Paul I. -- Emsworth 21:44, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

(For information and context, Emsworth seems most concerned with captions on portraits of people.) There is some more guidance about when not to write captions at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Writing Captions#Standard image types. Nominative pictures (which simply serve as an example of the subject of the article with no further information) generally don't need captions at all. In writing captions, I've found that the most difficult are for portraits. Shorter is better, but it's also harder to write concisely, and there's nothing to tell about a portrait except the date. I agree that the adjacent text should explain the picture in detail, and I also believe that the caption should explain it in brief, as a means of introduction to the adjacent text for readers scanning the article. -- ke4roh 23:34, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, the caption text should make readers interested to read the adjacent text. Interested. Waking up. Thus, boring text pieces are not recommendable. For this very reason, the caption text should not answer to everything. But it should steer to the correct portion of adjacent text. 213.243.157.114 00:19, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)