Special Notation

Capping has nuances (cf. 'The Persistence of Captioning (...etc.)'). To indicate these nuances, since capping is done using typed text (...so far... see 'The future of captioning'), there has evolved at some time or other character usages to express those nuances. The mode is vaguely analogous to that of 'smileys', but is used in addition to them.

Common types include:

• 'thought bubbles' - .oO or Oo. or oO0 or 0Oo - delimit a part of the caption that is being thought rather than spoken - often in this manner:

  .oO I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm a cheesehead. Oo. 
  

• 'singing' - ~ or o/ or o/` - delimit a part of the caption that is sung or from a song - usually in the form e.g.

  ~ I see a black Ford and I want to paint it red ~
  

• 'music or sound-effects' - [* usually - to invoke a musical quote/theme, or an appropriate sound-effect, e.g:

  [*1812 Overture*]
  

  or:

  "Squirrel filet revenge! [*BAM!*]"
  

• 'chat or conversation' - [ or ( or [[ - delimit chat between cappers in the caption gallery... cappers are human and like to converse or exchange news/thoughts/whatever. UpSky2 uses double square brackets for chat or personal comments, e.g:

  [[Just my own comment in here...isn't this wiki fun?]]
  

  but that usage is eccentric; parentheses are normal.

So far, in one of the glories of capping practice, these conventions have remained loosely flexible and unenforced.