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If you are not content with the communication you have with your closed-captioning company, it is time to take a look at your part in the communication.  A good captioning company will ensure that your deadlines are met, that you receive quality service, a quality product, and that all your requests are taken care of.  There is typically a catch--they can’t work miracles (although, they would love to), so they need your help.  

You can do one thing to help the successful completion of each and every one of your programs--COMMUNICATE with your captioning company! Try setting a day that the project will arrive to the captioning company on a consistent basis and a consistent day that the captioning company will deliver the closed captioning final product (tapeless or tape, et cetera). If coming up with a set schedule is difficult (I know it is not always easy in the world of post production), let them know in advance when you will be shipping your program and when you need them to deliver the CC master to its location--especially if there is a tight turnaround—-so they can schedule the best team of captioners for your particular program. When you ship your tape always include the operations manager's e-mail in the shipment notification section of FedEx, UPS, or DHL. The sooner they know it is coming, the faster they can get working. All in all, a serviceable company, will make practically any request happen.  So, make it easy on yourself and your captioning company, and communicate!

So, you've contracted with a closed-captioning company (or closed-captioner service provider) and now you must put your full confidence in them to caption your program accurately. With the plethora of closed captioning companies out there, this is not always an easy thing to do. Keep in mind that a large percentage of viewers will watch your program with captions, therefore turning the captions into a representation of your programming.

To confide in your captioning company, you first need to understand how captioning works. Captioning has its own standard just like journalism or publishing does. Be sure you understand exactly what service you will be getting. If your program will be captioned in roll-up style, many of the captioning "rules" do not apply as it is a simplified version of pop-on captioning. If the captioning company has a standard, be sure to ask what it is.

When you watch captions, you might wonder why certain punctuation is being used that is normally not used in other writing.

Here are some examples:

• Double dashes are used for breaks in speech.
• Ellipses are used for directing viewers to the screen and for long pauses in speech to add to the effect.

You may often wonder why poor grammar is being captioned. Usually, captioning companies do not correct grammar in speech. The hard of hearing and deaf community should read the exact same thing as the hearing people hear. In other words, they get relayed the same message. For example, in a movie where the main character speaks with broken English, should not be changed as it is part of the actor's character. Correcting grammar can change the meaning to the closed-caption viewer.

If you are still uneasy about giving over your captions to a captioning company, know that you can always have the option of proofing the closed caption transcript before the final recording. Your closed-captioning company should give the captions three quality checks, but even so, a book for publishing gets many more reviews for publishing and still winds up with errors. Be careful when proofing the transcript that you do not make preference changes, as the captioning company may end up charging you for extra time spent.

Your closed-captioning company should be experts in their field, so remember that you are working with them to make captioning judgment calls and decisions for your programs.