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Chicago Style Library Guide: Captions

A quick introduction to Chicago Style for academic papers.

Formatting Captions

  • An explanation of captions can be found starting at section 3.21 of the CMOS 18th edition.

  • Captions should be capitalized using sentence case.

  • Captions appear outside, and usually below, the illustration.

  • Titles for paintings, drawings, photographs, statues, and books will be italicized and in title case.

  • Titles of articles, essays, and short poems are not in italics, but will be in quotation marks.

  • Commit to either full sentences with appropriate punctuation in the caption or incomplete sentences with no closing punctuation.

  • Illustration numbers (e.g., Figure 3, Plate 1) should be followed by a period, a space, then the caption.

  • If the text of your caption runs long, it should be single spaced.

Example

ife of Chinese Emperors. Chinese art. Qing period Wall Art

Figure 3. Life of Chinese Emperors, Qing period