7 Auto-Caption Mistakes That Make Your Shorts Look Amateur

I've been editing short-form content for about two years now, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's this: captions can make or break your video. A well-captioned video looks professional. A poorly-captioned one looks like you gave up halfway through.

Here are the seven mistakes I see people make all the time — and how to fix them.

1. Using Full Sentences When You Should Use Words

This is the biggest one. If someone says "I think this is a really important point that we should consider," showing all of that at once is overwhelming. Instead, break it into individual words or short phrases that appear in sync with the speech.

Tools like ApexClip handle this automatically with word-level timestamps, but if you're doing it manually, you need to be ruthless about chopping up your text.

2. Wrong Font Size for Mobile Viewing

Here's a test: take a screenshot of your video and shrink it to the size of a phone screen (about 375px wide). Can you read the captions? If not, they're too small.

I usually go with at least 48px font size for captions on 9:16 video. Some creators go even bigger — 64px or more. The point is, your captions need to be readable without squinting.

3. No Background on Captions

White text on a white background? Invisible. Even on darker backgrounds, you need some kind of contrast. A dark background strip, a subtle shadow, or a colored box behind the text — anything that ensures readability.

I personally prefer a semi-transparent black background behind captions. It works on almost any video content and doesn't distract from the visuals.

4. Captions That Don't Sync

This is the one that makes me click away from a video in about 3 seconds. If the captions are even half a second off from the audio, it feels broken. Your brain notices the desync immediately, and it's distracting.

Word-level timestamps solve this problem. Tools like ApexClip use Whisper's word timestamps to ensure every caption is perfectly synced to the audio. If you're using sentence-level timestamps, you'll always have some drift.

5. All Caps for Everything

ALL CAPS WORKS FOR EMPHASIS ON ONE OR TWO WORDS. BUT IF YOUR ENTIRE CAPTION IS IN ALL CAPS, IT FEELS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING AT THE VIEWER.

Use sentence case or title case for most captions. Reserve all caps for emphasis on specific words — like when someone stresses a particular point.

6. No Line Breaks

Long lines of text that span the entire width of the screen are hard to read. Break your captions into 2-3 lines maximum. Each line should be short enough to read in a glance.

A good rule: if a line has more than 5-6 words, break it up.

7. Ignoring Caption Placement

Captions that cover someone's face? Bad. Captions at the very bottom of the screen where platform UI elements overlap? Also bad.

Place your captions in the middle-lower third of the screen — below the speaker's face but above where TikTok/Instagram/YouTube place their UI elements. Most tools let you adjust the vertical position of captions.

The Quick Fix

If you're using ApexClip, most of these are handled automatically. The tool syncs captions to word-level timestamps, uses appropriate font sizes, and positions them correctly for 9:16 video.

But even if you're using a different tool, fixing these seven mistakes will immediately make your shorts look more professional.