UK TeX FAQ -- question 127

### The style of captions

Changes to the style of captions may be made by redefining the commands that produce the caption. So, for example, `\fnum@figure` (which produces the float number for figure floats) may be redefined:

      \renewcommand{\fnum@figure}{\textbf{Fig.~\thefigure}}

which will cause the number to be typeset in bold face. (Note that the original definition used `\figurename`.) More elaborate changes can be made by patching the `\caption` command, but since there are packages to do the job, such changes (which can get rather tricky) aren't recommended for ordinary users.

The float package provides some control of the appearance of captions, though it's principally designed for the creation of non-standard floats). The caption2 and ccaption (note the double "c") packages provide a range of different formatting options; ccaption is the more modern and comprehensive, and also provides 'continuation' captions and captions that can be placed outside of float environments.

`caption2.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/supported/caption.tar.gz; note that caption2's documentation is incomplete, and the documentation of the older caption should be typeset as well as that of the newer package.
`ccaption.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/supported/ccaption.tar.gz
`float.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/supported/float.tar.gz