Caption Writing

Captions (master method)

Follow caption-guide.md in this folder, the complete plain-English method. This file is the operating summary.

Process

1. Name the exhibit. Open with a verbless noun phrase that names what the reader is looking at, then a period, never "This figure shows." The opener is a bare label of the object; the expansion follows it. The claim, when present, is the closer, not the opener.
2. Decode the reading keys. Key every mark on the canvas exactly once, every color, panel, line, bar direction, axis, symbol, and bold cell, as a short "label: meaning" fragment. Expand every abbreviation on first caption use, and state the scale direction of any ordinal axis that could be misread ("lower is better", "brighter is higher").
3. State the claim with its numbers glued. On a flagship, land the takeaway as the closing sentence, carrying only the one or two headline numbers. Every number travels in a pair and is glued to its exact object; a lone number tells no story, and the full results row stays in the cells.
4. Close on caveats. Fold provenance in as a terse pointer, never a sentence of its own beyond the cross-reference. Carry the setup constants and local caveats that live nowhere else, the reproduce-me numbers, the as-is unfinished counts, what the bold cells mark.
5. Self-containment beats deduplication. A caption is read by a skimmer who may never touch the running text, so restate the body freely; the repeat is deliberate, not a mistake. Spend the caption's unique real estate on the decode and the setup constants that appear nowhere else.
6. Flagship exhibits must carry the verdict. Rank each exhibit before writing: the flagship (headline table or chart) states the verdict outright as its closer; the workhorse (per-item table, diagram) only describes and takes no verdict. Let caption length track this role, not the Figure/Table label, the method-carrying figure earns the fullest caption; a scoreboard earns a three-sentence label.
7. Check claim direction against the data. Before shipping, verify the takeaway's direction matches the scale you decoded, if "lower is better," the winner must hold the lower number. Confirm each number is still glued to the object it measures and that no two distinct rates were rounded into one.

Core rules

• Open with a verbless noun phrase naming the object; never "This figure shows." Order every caption name -> decode -> claim; the verdict is the closer.
• Rank the exhibit first: flagship captions claim (verdict last), workhorse captions only describe.
• Decode every mark exactly once, no color, line, bar, panel, symbol, or bold cell left undefined; expand every abbreviation on first caption use; state the scale direction of any ordinal axis that could be misread.
• Self-containment beats deduplication: a caption may restate a body conclusion, and the flagship captions should, a reader who sees only the exhibit must get the finding.
• Spend the caption's unique real estate on the reading key and the setup constants that appear nowhere else.
• Carry only the one or two headline numbers that make the point; leave the full results row in the cells. Numbers travel in pairs, each glued to its object.
• Present tense, active voice, a named agent; fragments for legends, full sentences for narrative; provenance folded in as a terse pointer.
• Never a hyperparameter, p-value, statistical test, equation-to-solve, or hedge in a caption; a formula may name a quantity, never invite a derivation.
• Never survey the literature or discuss future work; name a rival only as a compared system, never argue against it.
• Prose axioms: sentences <= ~28 words, subject and verb early, zero "can"/"could", no bare This/These, no em dashes; ration semicolons to a true antithesis.

Figure-text exactness (the exhibit is one unit)

A figure, its caption, and the table it corresponds to are ONE exhibit; audit them together, not in isolation.

• One vocabulary per exhibit: legend, bar, and colorbar labels use the caption's terms; when the caption says values correspond to a table, the labels match that table's row names word for word. Mismatches mean regenerating the figure, not wording around it.
• Legend entries parallel: every entry fills the same slots ("model during training, items scored" / "final model, items never scored"), never a time beside a thing.
• State the one shared comparison first; each mark type then carries only its differences, decoded with one shared verb phrase.
• Anchor each inference to the datum that proves it: the nearest-named example in a lesson sentence must not be the counterexample.
• Explain visible anomalies where the eye lands (a filled circle right of its open circle gets its plain-terms explanation inside the caption).
• Check figure claims against the run data, not memory; never silently change a printed number.
• Full method and worked rules: Part 8 of caption-guide.md; the sentence-level pass lives in the sentence-audit skill.

Reference file

• caption-guide.md: full guide: term translations, the name -> decode -> land recipe, the fill-in template, the checklist, the five judgment calls where the dissected authors diverge, the semicolon addendum, the assembly order, worked examples (a figure, a table, and an algorithm caption) on a toy system, and the figure-text exactness rules (Part 8).