Teaching with Technology

Captioning Guidelines

Before you begin adding captions, review this page as well as the DCMP Captioning Key.

Do not caption verbatim

• Do not caption all the “umms” from a speaker.
• Do not use redundant and/or nonessential information; if the speaker stops in mid sentence and restarts the sentence, just caption the essential information that is being conveyed.
• Take note of Line Division in the Text section of the DCMP.

Captions cannot be more than 2 lines.

Try to not have a sentence stop midway through a caption line.

Example to be fixed:

He said hello. Then
he walked over to the door.

Suggested solution:

He said hello.
Then he walked over to the door.

Try to finish a sentence within a two line caption 

Try not to have a sentence run longer than two lines; sometimes this is not possible, but you can shift the line breaks around, or end a line with punctuation.

Example to be fixed:

He said hello, then he walked
To the door and sat down. Then he

said something funny
That made everyone laugh.

Suggested solution:

He said hello, then he walked
To the door and sat down.

Then he said something funny
That made everyone laugh.

Identify speakers with their own captioning line

Example:

(narrator)
It was a strange day indeed.

Music notation

Indicate with ♪

Speakers reading quotations

Beginning quotation marks should be used for each caption of quoted material except for the last caption. The last caption should have only the ending quotation mark.

Example: