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Writing Subtitles

General Guidelines

  • If the team a person is representing gets brought up during their introduction, make sure to include it in the subtitles on the second line in italics.
  • Make sure you always include spoken word in your subtitles.
  • Whether you include introductions to a person’s name and role in your subtitles is up to you (unless there are guidelines stating otherwise). You can come to a decision on this matter based on how much information you believe is already conveyed visually.

Colour

  • Use white as your standard font colour and use another approved colour to show things such as *inaudible sounds* or *offensive language*

Font

  • Make sure you write your subtitles in Helvetica when possible.
  • When you can’t use Helvetica (if you’re working on video editing from a Windows PC rather than a Mac for example) then the font you should use is Haas Grotesk.

Font Size

  • When writing subtitles containing people’s names and job positions use size 60.
  • If you’re so inclined you can also choose to make the name size 60 while making the job position and other relevant info slightly smaller.
  • Use size 50 for standard subtitles.

Italics

  • Subtitles should not generally be in italics and should not be bold or underlined (unless there are guidelines stating otherwise).
  • Only use italics for quotes inside speech marks, for example: We were standing on the road and he shouted across “who are you?” and then we responded as we walked over.

Software

  • If your video is being hosted on a platform (such as YouTube) that has an effective closed captioning system built in, feel free to make use of that feature but make sure you manually review and clean up your subtitles if you use any automatic transcription tools.
  • The text box used in our default templates will automatically snap to the right position. Do not move subtitles from the position the template sets them to.