Standard Ways to Add Details After Captions?

Question

When it comes to tables/figures, is it more common/standard/beneficial to put descriptions inside captions? I have separated descriptions from captions as follows, but I saw Use caption and long description for figure recently.

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

This is a sentence.

\begin{table}[h]
\caption{This is the title.}
\small The beginning description if needed.\par
{\centering\begin{tabular}{cccc} \hline
0.1234 & 0.5678 & 0.1234 & 0.5678 \\
0.1234 & 0.5678 & 0.1234 & 0.5678 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}\par}
The ending description if needed.
\end{table}

This is a sentence.

\begin{figure}[h]
\caption{This is the title.}
\small The beginning description if needed.\par
{\centering\rule{2in}{1.5in}\par}
The ending description if needed.
\end{figure}

This is a sentence.

\end{document}

As I have been studying LaTeX with no textbook, I even wonder whether the captions are in general located before/after the tables/figures. What is the best practice for writing the titles and the descriptions? Thanks.

Answer 1

Usual convention:

• (Tables) Caption right before of the table. Reason is (afaik), that a table can potentially span more than one page.
• (Figures) Caption right after the figure.
• The captions can be multi line -- no problem.
• (Recommendation) Read a decent book about LaTeX :)

Additional information about the object (table or figure) is usually placed within the normal text and not within the environment (table or figure).

---

Basic Example

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

This is a sentence.

\begin{table}
\centering % optional
\caption{This is the title.}
\label{tab:TableID}
% Code for generating table.
\end{table}

This is a sentence that may include information regarding \tablename~\ref{tab:TableID}.

\begin{figure}
\centering % optional
% Code for generating figure, like \includegraphics[]{}.
\caption{This is the title.}
\label{fig:FigureID}
\end{figure}

This is a sentence that may include information regarding \figurename~\ref{fig:FigureID}.

\end{document}

---

More Advanced Example

Needs two LaTeX runs before the references are correct.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{float}

\begin{document}

This is a sentence.

\begin{table}[H] % H option from float package.
\centering % optional
\caption{This is the title.}
\label{tab:TableID}
% Code for generating table.
\includegraphics[width = 0.8\textwidth]{example-image} % See https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/231738
\end{table}

This is a sentence that may include information regarding \tablename~\ref{tab:TableID}.

\begin{figure}[H] % H option from float package.
\centering % optional
% Code for generating figure, like \includegraphics[]{}.
\includegraphics[width = 0.8\textwidth]{example-image} % See https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/231738
\caption{This is the title.}
\label{fig:FigureID}
\end{figure}

This is a sentence that may include information regarding \figurename~\ref{fig:FigureID}.

\end{document}