Meaning & use
closed caption
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable
Text shown at the bottom of a screen that repeats the spoken words and describes sounds for viewers who cannot hear them.
Grammar: Countable, so you can say 'a closed caption' or 'closed captions'. It often appears in the plural.
Patterns
- turn on closed captions
- closed captions for something
- with closed captions
The movie was in a foreign language, so I turned on the closed captions.
She relies on closed captions to follow the dialogue in loud action scenes.
The video platform added closed captions to all its educational content.
Word forms
| plural | closed captions |
|---|
Common combinations
- turn on closed captions
- Press the CC button to turn on closed captions.
- closed captions for the deaf
- The theater offers closed captions for the deaf at selected screenings.
- live closed captions
- The news broadcast provides live closed captions during interviews.
- enable closed captions
- You can enable closed captions in the settings menu.
Synonyms and how they differ
- subtitles
- Subtitles usually translate dialogue into another language, while closed captions transcribe the original language and include sound descriptions.
- captions
- Captions is the shorter, general term; closed captions specifically means captions that can be turned on or off by the viewer.
Word family
- caption noun
- A short text under a picture or the text of a caption on screen.
- captioning noun
- The process or service of adding captions to a video.
Commonly confused: closed caption or open caption?
closed caption vs open caption
Open captions are always visible and cannot be turned off, while closed captions can be switched on and off.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'closed caption' correctly?
Choose one answer.
Closed captions are the on-screen text for a video, so turning them on to read dialogue is correct. Option 0 has a plural verb with a singular noun, option 2 confuses it with a written note, and option 3 confuses it with a book's caption.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “closed caption”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.