Over at Stylin' and Smilin', Will has stolen my thunder by posting an entry about captions that neatly summarizes several of the points I would have made today.
Condensed:
1.) Copy editors spend too little time writing captions.
2.) Copy editors too often write mind crunchingly dull captions.
3.) Captions should actually tell us something interesting.
If we followed these three points, not only would newspapers be better, but we would be more engaged in the editing process. After all, it’s easy to write: “Perez, wearing a shirt with a happy face on it, smiles as he looks at the camera.”
It’s more difficult to engage with the story and write: “Perez was ‘delighted with life,’ his wife says, before he began robbing banks and impersonating Ethel Merman.”