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A short with no captions asks everyone to turn the sound on. Most won’t: they’re on a bus, in bed, at work. Captions let your words reach them anyway, and they help everyone else follow along too.
Sound off, no captions
Sound off, with captions
Why captions matter
In a survey of 5,616 American adults by Verizon Media and Publicis Media, a large share said they watch video with the sound off:
Verizon Media and Publicis Media survey, 2019.
Captions also help:
- People who are deaf or hard of hearing, who otherwise can’t follow at all.
- People watching in a second language, who read faster than they listen.
- Everyone in a noisy place, or with a speaker who talks fast.
- Your message to stick: in the same survey, people remembered captioned video ads better.
What good captions look like
A caption has a split second to be read. Everything about it should make that easy: few words, big letters, high contrast, and a clear sign of which word is being said.
2 to 4 words a lineRead in one glance, then gone.
Big, bold lettersReadable on a small phone, at arm’s length.
The spoken word, lit upEyes follow the voice, word by word.
An outline or shadowHolds on any background, light or dark.
A wall of text
- A whole sentence on screen at once
- Small letters
- Covers the face
- People read ahead, or give up
Short lines
- 2 to 4 words at a time
- Big, bold letters
- Below the face
- People read along with your voice
Where to put them
On a tall screen, the app covers parts of your video: a bar at the top, buttons down the right side, and your name, description and sound at the bottom. Captions belong in the space that’s left: the lower middle, below the speaker’s face.
- Captions go here
- The face
- The app’s top bar
- Like, comment, share
- Name, description, sound
Time them word by word
Captions should appear the moment the words are said, not before and not after. Show a short group of words, light up each one as it’s spoken, and start a new group at a natural pause.
each word lights up as it’s said
Get every word right
Automatic speech recognition is good, but it still mishears. One wrong word in a caption is read by everyone, so check before you post.
- Names of people and places
- Numbers, prices and dates
- Brand and product names
- Words from your field
- Words that sound alike
- Punctuation that changes the meaning
Captions in Arabic
Arabic captions read right to left, and need a font made for Arabic, so letters join the way they should. When a speaker uses a dialect, writing it as heard can be hard to read for viewers from other countries; clear written Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic) reads well everywhere, while keeping what the speaker meant.
Dialect written as heard
- Spelled differently by each writer
- Harder to read across countries
- Easy to misread at a glance
Clear written Arabic
- One spelling everyone knows
- Reads well in every Arab country
- Keeps the speaker’s meaning
Add vowel marks (diacritics) only where a word could be misread. And when an English word appears inside an Arabic line, check the line still reads in the right order.
Burned-in captions vs. automatic captions
Apps can add captions for you: YouTube, for example, makes automatic captions in many languages, Arabic included. But those depend on the app and on the viewer. Captions you burn into the video are part of the picture: they always show, and they look the way you chose.
| Burned into the video | Automatic, by the app | |
|---|---|---|
| Always visible | Yes | Depends on the app and the viewer |
| Your style | Yes: font, colour, size, highlight | No |
| Same file on every app | Yes | Each app does its own |
| Accuracy | Checked by you | A machine’s best guess |
For long videos on YouTube, it’s still worth adding a caption file too. If your editor gives you one in the wrong format, convert it in seconds.
Free · Tool Subtitle converter Turn SRT into VTT or plain text, shift the timing, and download. Free, in your browser.Pick a style that’s yours
There’s no single right look. Pick one that fits your voice, then keep it: a steady style makes your shorts recognisable in the feed.
Sources