Lesson 5: Using Tables and Graphics
Writing captions
Although not absolutely necessary, most product manuals provide captions for all graphics including drawings, screenshots, and tables. These captions provide a short catch-phrase that tells your users what they'll be seeing in the graphic. It's sort of an extra reminder of what they should be thinking about when they look at the table or picture.
Captions tend to stand out more than the general text surrounding the graphic so you can find a little bit of information about a graphic without having to scrounge around the nearby text. If you've arrived at the page to see that particular table or figure rather than to read the section of text, this can be a real timesaver.
