Caption Max

by Kati Stevens

Preface: The software we use to caption allows us to write in short forms. After typing in those short forms the software “auto corrects” and fills in the real phrase. This is an amazing time saver and one of the reasons we are so efficient and quick with our captioning! Just check out Kati’s list of most popular short forms.

The English language is rich and heavy with over 170,000 words in current use (according to the Oxford English dictionary), not counting the words made up by certain residents of the Jersey shore. Despite the great breadth of possible word combinations possible, people on TV, especially reality shows, tend to use the same expressions a lot. This is not so surprising when you think about it, and as caption editors, we like to save time by short-forming (creating an abbreviation that, when typed, compels the whole phrase to appear in the file) some of the most popular phrases.

A selection of short forms I currently possess:

YKWIM – You know what I mean?
YWKIS – You know what I’m saying?
YK – You know
WELB – Welcome back (great for game shows)
ATP – at this point
IDK – I don’t know.
TYG – There you go.
TYVM – Thank you very much.
WDW – What do you want to do?

We also have show-specific ones that include catchphrases, audio descriptors (ex: capple for [cheers and applause] is my most frequently used audio descriptor short form), titles, and names. Also helping to make captioning faster and more accurate are short-forming typos and common misspellings. I’ve typed “your’e” more times than I can count when I’m going at lightning speed, and my short form automatically corrects it. Even those chevrons you see in roll-up captioning have been short-formed since hitting two periods in a row is easier and faster than hitting those chevrons while holding down a shift key.

The one drawback of short forms is that, when I’m typing in other situations, like Gchat or in Final Draft, I often type “yk” and am frustrated when “you know” doesn’t show up. If only the short form were more widely available in all life’s practices. YKWIM?