Chapter 3

A PICTURE IS WORTH A
THOUSAND WORDS
 CHAPTER 3
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

Caption

Writing a Caption Grammar

Content Rules
 Photo
Captions
✔ A photo caption gives readers
basic information to understand
a photograph.
✔ It should be clear, accurate, and
complete.
✔ It is often called as a cutline, but
shorter with only titles or
sentences of one-line length.
 Writing a Caption

Make a Give
relevant Write a
title for information photo
the about the
credit.
photo. photo.
 Content of Photo Captions

Professional standard photo captions should include:

✔ the identification of the people, the place of the event, and
the date when the photograph was taken in the first
sentence; and
✔ relevant information in the next sentence to help readers
understand the picture.
Photo and caption complement each other.

The photo
The caption
provokes
satisfies the
the reader’s
reader’s
emotional
curiosity.
reaction.
 Rules of Writing Captions

When you write a photo caption, there are some rules that you have to
follow:
❖ Supply specific information which answer 5WH-questions.
❖ Use the present tense to describe action in the photo.
❖ Write captions in a complete sentence—mostly a declarative sentence.
❖ Clearly indentify the people and location that appear in the photo.
❖ For photograph of more than one person, identify from left to right. In
case of large groups, identify only the notable people.
❖ Never include personal feelings and descriptive terms which interpret
them such as beautiful, scary, sad, lovely.
 Organizational charts,
pie charts, and tables
are other forms of
Charts and informational picture.
Tables
 Grammar In Action
PUNCTUATION

❑ Captions normally begin with a capital letter.

❑ Captions should not be in italics, unless that also occurs in
the main story.
❑ All sentences and any sentence fragments in that caption
should end with a period.
Thank You!