What Is A Caption?

What exactly is a caption? Well the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as: "The heading of a chapter, section, illustration, etc." Fairly simple, nothing much you didn't know already, although nowadays people generally only think of it as being the heading of an illustration. Then the question is; how did they become such an enormous factor in our society? Very rarely will you see a picture alone, they are almost always accompanied by a piece of text indicating what the picture is of. I'm sure you've had that feeling of your mind wandering off into far away lands when staring at a painting hanging on someone's wall or in a gallery. This only happens because you are trying to complete the scene and what is happening around the frame. In the case of a newspaper or magazine this is the job of the caption, so that you know exactly what the picture is representing. Funny captions on the other hand, can make an ordinary picture a really funny picture.

A Brief History of Captions

So when was the first ever caption used? No one is sure, but drawings as far back as the Roman mosaics do not feature such annotations, and one of the earliest documents we have which uses captions is the 10th century Bayeux Tapestry.

Another big question is were captions first used to describe a picture, or pictures used to further describe words? One of the most famous historical documents to contain extensive captions is the Bayeux Tapestry, created in the 1070s to depict the Norman invasion of England. As it was made several years after the 1066 invasion, the story would have been told many times before the tapestry was created, therefore meaning that the pictures were put to cloth to depict the text of the story, rather than the caption being added afterwards as captions narrating the pictures. However, as with all things, there are two ways of looking at this. The contrasting evidence and argument is that the pictures were drawn first and the text added afterwards, this is because in some places the text appears to wrap around the pictures, this can be seen on the Bayeux Tapestry website.

The name 'Caption' tends to suggest that the second idea is the correct one. The word comes from the Latin 'capere' or 'to capture' in English. This may link to the common phrase in English, for example, "He really captured the atmosphere with that photo"; Suggesting that pictures were used to capture the feeling and mood of the story being told. Although even this could just about be turned around and used to argue exactly the opposite; that captions are used to capture the atmosphere of pictures. The fact is that captions are so common their origins have been dissolved into the realm of forgotten history, and nobody is entirely sure how they first came into existence, not to mention funny captions.

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