Formats
Beyond two lines: panels, boxes and captions
Top and bottom text is only one way to caption a picture. The newer formats put words in boxes, beside panels or above the image - and you can make all of them here.
The classic meme puts one line above and one below. But as memes grew up, people found other shapes for a joke, and three of them are now as common as the original.
Captions above the picture
Many modern memes keep the picture clean and put the words in a plain strip above it, like a tweet with a photo attached: “When you realise it's Monday tomorrow.” This works especially well when the picture is a reaction and the text is the situation. On this site, choose text above the picture when you create a post and the caption moves into a white bar on top.
Boxes and panels
Other formats are built from panels, and each panel gets its own label. The best-known is Drake Hotline Bling, from the 2015 music video: two panels, Drake turning away from the first thing and smiling at the second. It's a whole joke about preferences in four words.
Labelled-picture formats followed: the distracted boyfriend looking back at another woman while his girlfriend glares, the brain that grows brighter with each panel as the ideas get sillier. Each label sits right on the thing it names.
Which to use
Use top and bottom text when the picture is a character with a personality - Success Kid, Bad Luck Brian, Philosoraptor. Use a caption above when the picture is a reaction to a situation you describe. Use boxes when the joke is a comparison or a list. When you pick a meme here, it already knows which shape it takes, and gives you one field for each line or box.
More stories
- What is a meme, anyway? - A word a biologist made up in 1976 now names the internet's favourite kind of joke. How a picture and two lines of text became a language millions of people speak.
- Top text, bottom text: the grammar of a meme - White capital letters with a black outline, one line above the picture, one below. Every part of the classic meme layout is doing a job.
- Advice animals: the colour-wheel years - A dog in front of a rainbow wheel started a whole family of characters, each with one personality and one job. How Advice Dog's descendants took over the internet around 2010.
- Rage comics: when the internet drew itself in MS Paint - Wobbly lines, a handful of faces and one big feeling per panel. The crude comics that gave us Trollface, Forever Alone and Y U No.
- Meme Celebrities: the people behind the faces - A yearbook photo, a stock photo shoot, a day at the beach. Nine ordinary people who woke up one morning to find their face had become a joke the whole world knew.
- From the big screen to the top text - A line from The Lord of the Rings, a smirk from 1971, a beer advert and a squinting cartoon. How film and TV became the internet's favourite raw material.
- How to make a meme that lands - Pick the right face, follow its formula, keep it short and be specific. Five rules from the millions of posts made on this site.