Frequently Asked Question List for TeX
Formatting
The style of captions
Changes to the style of captions may be made by redefining the commands
that produce the caption. So, for example, \fnum@figure (which
produces the float number for figure floats) may be redefined, in a
package of your own, or between
\makeatletter–\makeatother:
\renewcommand{\fnum@figure}{\textbf{Fig.~\thefigure}}
which will cause the number to be typeset in bold face. (Note that
the original definition used
\figurename.) More elaborate changes can be
made by patching the \caption command, but since there are
packages to do the job, such changes (which can get rather tricky)
aren’t recommended for ordinary users.
The float package provides some control of the appearance of
captions, though it’s principally designed for the creation of
non-standard floats. The caption and ccaption
(note the double “c”) packages provide a range of different
formatting options.
ccaption also provides “continuation” captions and captions
that can be placed outside of float environments. The (very simple)
capt-of package also allows captions outside a float
environment. Note that care is needed when doing things that assume
the sequence of floats (as in continuation captions), or potentially
mix non-floating captions with floating ones.
The memoir class includes the facilities of the
ccaption package; the KOMA-script classes also
provide a wide range of caption-formatting commands.
The documentation of caption is available by processing a
file manual.tex, which is created when you unpack
caption.dtx
Note that the previously-recommended package caption2 has
now been overtaken again by caption; however,
caption2 remains available for use in older documents.