Why is this picture in the ‘Nation’? What’s going on, when and where?
Letter to Santa: A girl writes her Christmas wish list. Captioning photos is a critical function in journalism. The caption, sometimes called cutlines, is the explanatory text printed below a picture.
Captioning photos is indeed a critical function in journalism.
A picture caption should be as accurate and as specific as possible.
Captions are essential for understanding most pictures
Although an editor can sometimes publish a picture on a whim, there are perfectly good reasons why a particular picture, and the caption, are used. To understand why an editor uses a particular picture, one needs to look at the caption. Incidentally, many readers confuse “caption” with “headline” (title of a story).
The caption, sometimes called cutlines, is the explanatory text printed below a picture. It is one of the most read elements in a story. The reader’s eye often moves from the headline to the picture and the caption before the reader decides whether t to read the rest of the story.
