Word-by-word captions: how to make them and edit them all at once

Word-by-word captions show each word the moment it’s spoken instead of flashing a whole sentence at once. Viewers read along with the voice, which keeps their eyes on the video, and it’s become the default look for talking-head clips on TikTok, Reels and Shorts. Making them by hand means timing every word. Automatic speech recognition does that for you; the work that’s left is fixing a few words and settling on a style.

In Inky Clips the words don’t just pop in. They write themselves, stroke by stroke, in the font you choose. Here is the whole process, with the part most tools make awkward: changing every caption at once.

How the captions are built

The speech model gives each word a start and end time. The editor groups the words into short captions of up to six words (and about 32 characters), starting a new one whenever the speaker pauses for more than about half a second. Each caption stays on screen for a moment after its last word, then fades. If a caption is too wide for the frame, it shrinks a little and then wraps onto a second line, so nothing runs off the edge of a vertical video.

Two ways to write the words

Select any caption and look under Timing. Writing has two settings, and the choice applies to every caption:

• Synced to speech: each word writes itself the instant it’s spoken. This is true word-by-word captioning, and it’s the one to use for fast talkers and punchy edits.
• Smooth pen (the default): the pen writes steadily through each caption, keeping up with the speech without stopping between words. It looks more like natural handwriting and suits slower, calmer narration.

Fixing one caption

Click a caption on the purple lane of the timeline. The playhead jumps to it and its words appear in the Caption text box. Correct a misheard word, add punctuation, or rewrite the line entirely. A few things to know:

• Editing respaces the timing. When you change the words, they’re spread evenly over that caption’s time span. For one corrected word that’s invisible; if you rewrite a long caption, play it back to check it still matches the voice.
• Timing is per caption. Start moves the caption, Fade out at sets when it leaves. The words inside keep their relative timing.
• Delete removes just that caption, for example a stray “um” on its own. Press Delete or click Delete caption.
• There’s no split or merge. To move words from one caption to the next, delete them in one and type them into the other.

Editing all captions at once

Any style change you make to one caption already applies to all of them: font, size, colours, outline, background, pointer, position and writing pace are shared by the whole caption layer. That way you can’t accidentally end up with one caption in a different font.

To make that explicit, and to work on the style without a particular caption’s text in the way, right-click any caption on the timeline (on a phone or tablet, long-press it) and choose Edit all captions. Every caption on the lane lights up, the inspector notes that you’re editing all captions, and the controls left are the font, the style and the writing pace. From here the delete button reads Delete all captions, which clears the whole layer if you want to start again.

Positioning

Drag any caption on the preview and the whole layer moves with it. New captions sit low in the frame, at about 82% of the height. That’s a good place on YouTube; on TikTok and Reels, move them up to around two thirds so the app’s own caption doesn’t cover them. Handwriting text for TikTok videos has more on safe zones.

Regenerating

If you picked the wrong language, or edited your video and brought it back in, run Auto captions again. The new transcript replaces the old captions and keeps your style, so you don’t have to set it up twice.

Combining captions and handwritten titles

Captions live on their own lane, and any text you add with Add text lives on its own lanes below. That makes it easy to have a handwritten hook at the top and speech captions underneath, each with its own font. For which fonts pair well, see Choosing a handwriting font for video or browse the fonts.