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 vaguely analogous to 'smileys', but in addition to them.

Common types include:

• 'thought bubbles' - .oO (or) Oo. - 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/ - 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.