Arrogance in captions comes when the person writing the caption doesn’t care about the reader, and simply writes a caption that is easy at the moment of writing. This can also be consider being selfish because the writer cares more about themselves than the reader who is trying to decipher what the photo and story are about. This can also happen when a writer is trying to be ‘fancy’ and try something new or clever. There is no need to get complicated. Keep things simple, clear, and accurate. You know what they say about people who assume … ! The same goes for writing captions. These assumptions could be on the part of the journalist, photographer, or even someone else at the publication where everything is being put together. Don’t make assumptions about what was going on in the photo, or who the people are. Find out the truth and only include what’s accurate. This also goes for style and format. If you aren’t sure if the publication has a specific format for captions, ask. Don’t use a format you like that may need to be completely revised later because you didn’t ask. Sloppiness happens when someone just doesn’t care, or doesn’t consider the situation important enough to double-check. The result of sloppiness can be incorrect spelling, the wrong names for people in the photo, captions that don’t match the photos, referring to a photo in the story incorrectly, etc. If you’re proud of your work, do a good job from start to finish. This can also happen when someone tries to use another language in the caption, but doesn’t check if it has been written properly. Google Translate is not the same as double-checking if the language is correct! As a journalist, whatever you print either in your story or caption is usually considered fact by your readers. They rightfully assume you’ve done your fact-checking and that what you’re telling them is accurate. If you were too lazy or sloppy to do the job, you risk passing along incorrect information to a large number of people. Also remember that once information gets “out there,” it can be hard to correct. Especially if that information is related to an event that was tragic, stressful or still ongoing.
لا تكن متغطرسًا. تجنب وضع الافتراضات. احرص ألا تكون مهملًا. تذكر أن ما تكتبه يعد حقيقة.