Caption reading speed is characters/sec

Caption reading speed is characters per second, not a vibe named punchy. A cue that vanishes before the eye finishes it is a timing error. Two lines is the shape. All-caps and emoji spend the same budget as letters. Watch the burn on mute. Do not invent a Versely CPS number and treat it as a spec.

CPS is the unit, not WPM theatre

Speech is faster than comfortable reading. A captioner that times 1:1 with a fast talker will flash the last three words. Reading speed is how much type arrives versus how long it stays. Words per minute is the broadcast shorthand. Characters per second is what you can actually count on a line: glyphs, spaces, punctuation.

Broadcast and streaming houses have used adult bands around 160–180 words per minute for same-language captions for years. Netflix’s timed-text guidance has long used a characters-per-second cap in the high teens for adult programmes, with a higher ceiling as a hard max. Those figures are other people’s style guides. They are not a switch in Versely and they are not a number this page will pretend lives in the product. What you ship is cue duration versus character count on this file.

The failure is specific. The first two words land. The rest vanish. The next cue is already there. Retention software will not name this. You only see it by watching the cut on mute at phone size. Word-highlight families can feel faster than they are because the accent moves. They still have to leave the line up long enough to finish.

Fixing CPS is almost never “pick a louder preset.” It is:

1. Split the cue at a clause.
2. Cut the sentence.
3. Hold the last line a beat after the mouth stops.

Matching in/out to the waveform is how the last word gets clipped. The ear can follow a rate the eye cannot.

Two lines, then split

Latin-script captions are commonly kept near 32–42 characters a line and at most two rows. That is a guideline that survived from broadcast into social, not a format law. A 90-character auto cue is what you get when the speaker did not pause. The generator will emit it. The pass after transcription is to split it.

Three lines is a different failure (chrome). Two lines that still overflow CPS is this failure. Shrinking the type to keep a long sentence on one row makes it small and still too long. Caption timing is when the block appears. Reading speed is whether a human can finish it while it is there. Do not collapse those two clocks.

Names, URLs, and product spellings are the strings that blow the cap. They are also the strings you must not hyphenate. “Versely” split as “Verse- / ly” is a brand error. Hold the name on one line and split somewhere else, even if the other line is short.

A two-line block that stays for half a second is still unreadable. A 70-character line that stays for four seconds is readable and still a layout problem on 9:16. Fix length first so the block has a shape. Then check that the hold matches that shape.

Auto captions will not slow the speaker down. DYNAMIC word-pop will not either. If the talent talks through a list of SKUs, you either cut the list or you accept more cues. You do not “keep up” by shortening the hold.

All-caps and emoji blow the budget

CPS counts what is on the line, not what a designer meant.

All-caps is slower to parse and taller in the box. A 42-character sentence in sentence case is not the same object in full caps: the eye loses word shape, the glyphs sit higher, and the block collides with faces and chrome sooner. Hook posts abuse caps because they look like a poster. Ads and SDH should not. If you need emphasis, highlight one word. Do not capitalise the paragraph.

Emoji is a character that still occupies width and time. Some glyphs are wide. Some render as a colour blob that the eye has to recognise before it can continue the sentence. Paid social and SDH usually skip them. An organic hook can keep one if CPS still clears the mute pass. Two emoji in a two-line cue is a cartoon that stole the last of the budget.

Neither all-caps nor emoji is “free personality.” Both spend the same seconds the viewer has to read the claim. On a mute feed the claim is the soundtrack. Spending it on decoration is how the price, the name, or the verb disappears.

If the line is already at the cap in sentence case with no emoji, you are done adding. Split or cut. Do not “energise” an overflowing cue.

The check, not a house number

Versely does not publish a CPS target you should treat as a spec. Describe the check instead.

Lock the cut. Transcribe. Read names and numbers. Split long clauses. Burn a candidate style — BASIC at 1× for a quiet block, DYNAMIC at 2× only if the hook is a spoken phrase you can still finish. Then:

• Play the export on mute, on a phone, at the size the feed will show.
• If you cannot finish a line, the rate is too high, regardless of what a desktop preview suggested.
• If only the last word clips, hold the cue; do not speed the next one.
• If the whole track is uniformly late, that is an offset, not CPS. If it drifts, that is frame rate. Do not “fix” drift by shortening holds.

The AI caption generator will burn whatever transcript it has. The add captions path is the same engine: 165 language codes, 21 BASIC looks, 9 DYNAMIC looks. None of those settings is a reading-speed control. You are the control.

Word-highlight (Snap, Reveal; the DYNAMIC row) should be the last thing you add, not the first thing you use to hide a dense cue. Karaoke on a maxed CPS line is a strobe. Two-line sentence case on a split cue is the adult version of the same words.

A hook overlay is not exempt. If it is the claim, it has to survive the first two seconds, not decorate them. Count those characters too.

The unit is characters per second. The test is a mute phone. The fix is split, cut, or hold — not a punchier preset, not all-caps, not an emoji to “break up” a line you already cannot finish.

Run the mute CPS pass on the next burn in Versely.

FAQ

What CPS does Versely require?

It does not publish a house CPS you should treat as a spec. Broadcast guides live in the high teens of characters per second for adult same-language captions. Your check is a mute pass at phone size: if you cannot finish the line, split, cut, or hold.

Does a DYNAMIC preset fix captions that feel too fast?

No. Word-level animation spends the same hold. If CPS is already maxed, motion makes the miss louder. Drop to a two-line BASIC block and split the cue.

Do all-caps and emoji count toward reading speed?

Yes. They occupy width and parse time. All-caps is slower and taller. Emoji is a glyph with a width. Paid and SDH should skip both unless the brief is the exception you can still finish on mute.