"The task of producing a cpr-themed cover version is left up to you, gentle readers, talented readers, readers who have discovered that if you hover your mouse over comics on the internet, sometimes they tell you to do stuff."
— Dinosaur Comics' March 11th, 2009
alt text
alt text
Text that shows up as a tooltip when you hover the mouse cursor over an image (or if you're using a cellphone, hold down your finger on the image) — or other elements on a page, even text — also known (more accurately) as "title text". Alt text has many uses; some Webcomics use it to display comments, credits, or additional punchlines. TV Tropes does have Alt Text capabilities, in the forms of the Pot Hole and Spoilers.
Finishing a lengthy Archive Binge, only to find out you missed all the funny alt text, is something that hopefully will never happen to you.
Alt text is inserted by defining the "title=" attribute of the image in the webpage's html or xhtml document. The actual "alt=" attribute has other purposes, though older versions of Internet Explorer would still display it as a tooltip, leading many authors to create alt text only functional in it.
Examples:
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#-H
- Two P Start, although the alt-text only begins mid-way through.
- Abstruse Goose has mouseover Alt Text and an alternate title hidden in full text of the image location (found by viewing the image info).
- Achewood added alt-text in fairly early in its run.
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja has done this since the So What Is a McNinja issue, mostly for another joke or some commentary on the strip.
- Alfdis & Gunnora has Alt Text on every page, usually a commentary on the page or characters, occasionally additional dialogue.
- Alice and the Nightmare uses alt text for additional worldbuilding and introducing characters whose names aren't given in text.
- Amazing Superpowers. From comments:
- alt text=win
- How do you see an alt text?
- The only appear to those who truly believe.
- Those that believe in MOUSE HOVERING. - APT Comic is currently trying to make sure every one has one.
- The Ask Dr. Eldritch comics includes the added punchline variety.
- Aurora (2019) has one for every page. A few notable ones...
- 1.1.11:
ohhh so he's a GOD
ohHhH so she collects and vivisects souls
OHHHH so THAT'S why she's destroying the city
man I love getting answers. this is the best day ever - 1.1.28
oh right, the STAB wound
- 1.2.17:
awhaaat? inviting the mysterious stranger to join you on your quest? unprecedented! unheard of! the fantasy genre has never seen anything like it!
- 1.2.22
*blend of screaming, tortured voices of the restless dead gradually swell in volume and resolve into 'FUNIMATION (you should be watching)'*
- 1.3.4
fun fact, he's taking off his scabbard here because I realized I forgot to draw it in every subsequent panel
- 1.3.7
owwww not my videogame weakness
- 1.1.11
- Axe Cop, starting around comic #84.
- Beyond Bloom Has them on most pages. Often silly quips, commentary, or extra information.
- Bicycle Boy has Alt Text in almost all comics.
- Biter Comics features hover text either adding to the joke or offering some commentary on the work.
- Brawl in the Family does this starting with comic #167. Later lampshaded:
- "Hey! Stop reading the mouseover text and look at the comic!"
- The author does not add alt-text to comics that involve especially long and deep stories, allowing the reader to enjoy the comic as it is.
- Chainsawsuit is another unusual case. A secondary punchline or remark can often by found by checking the list of search tags under Kris's rants. To name a few:
thems ain't worth a trip downtown
she's acting all mad but she probably likes him i bet
the letter y is different in english
ho boy wot guacs
this is the only comic with the tag samsung galaxy tab - Chirault starts using alt text at some point, but it's usually not really funny or interesting.
- The Comic Adventures of Left & Right: Inserted retroactively as of September 2010.
- Cowbirds in Love, lampshaded in #11
- Cyanide and Happiness doesn't use alt text, but the filenames under which each comic's graphical image is stored often contain hidden messages of their own. For instance, if you look at the comic for July 13th, 2007, and right-click over the comic itself and choose "properties" or "save as", you'll see it has the filename "assassinations-are-less-controversial-then-low-income-families.png".
- Daughter of the Lilies has it on every page to provide jokes, bits of worldbuilding, minor Foreshadowing, occasional references to The Bible, or comments from early-access Patrons.
- The Dawn Chapel often uses hovertext for both the comic itself and the accompanying 'stinger' process sketch.
- Dear Children has alternate text on many of its pages, and they are almost always humorous.
- Almost all Dewey Defeats Tarzan strips have this.
- Dinosaur Comics has an additional punchline in the alt text, as with the comic's archive name and email subject.
- Down The Stairs features Alt Text in all comics.
- Dumbing of Age started having it on February 14th, 2013. The first altext was, appropriately enough, "what i can add HOVERTEXT???" One strip almost a year earlier had hover text added retroactively, as well: "if you've looked through the entire archive looking for hovertext, congratulations, here is some"
- Edmund Finney's Quest to Find the Meaning of Life has a little paintbrush icon under each comic, which displays the alt text in a little widget if you hover your mouse over it. Apparently the alt text is stuff Edmund writes down in his notebook.
- El Goonish Shive once featured a hidden line in the image name between 2006-02-22 to 2008-02-22. They have been lost since the comic moved into a new php-framework but can still be read here.
- The End (2010) has started running stories in the alt text. Chapter 15 told the story of a studio team making a movie tangentially similar to the chapter. Chapter 16 does something similar to old pulp sci-fi novels.
Our intrepid heroes have scarcely begun to explore when their way is barred by the one of the Cosmic Mind-Thief's evil obstacles - the first of many, no doubt! "Look out, Savage! The Mind-Thief has constructed an id fence to bar our way! One touch, and your consciousness will be overtaken by your innermost fears!" "Not to worry, Smart! I still have the Cowl of Solitude that Science-Commander Warner gave me! It will isolate my thoughts in a psychic echo chamber-" "-and short out the id fence, overloading and destroying the psi-crystal that powers it! Of course! You're sure putting that doctorate in Psychophysics to good use, old friend!"note
- Everyday Heroes includes additional punchlines (or commentary, for serious episodes).
- Existential Comics has alt-text on most (but not all) comics, typically a second punchline. More "serious" comics, the early issues, and some at random don't. Humorous is also provided for most of the philosophers listed at the bottom of the page — clicking on their names leads to a page listing every mention of the philosopher in the comic.
- Far Out There has been featuring Alt Text since page 315 (on the Smack Jeeves pages, at least)
- Five Color Control: The first comic lampshades this, with alt text reading, "Sorry, we're not cool enough to do rollover jokes."
- Flaky Pastry's 300th strip has a 215-word alt text.
- The Fox Sister: Sporadically contains funny remarks about the respective page
- Furry Experience adds alt-text starting on Thursday 17 December 2009, though it's done about half the time, while the rest go alt-text-less. It's usually included to add something without the characters Breaking the Fourth Wall.
- A Girl and Her Fed began using these for extra jokes and occasional commentary roughly around when Art Evolution started to hit the comic.
- Girls with Slingshots has them (since #1054), sometimes as a second punchline, other times as an author's note.
- As of spring of 2014, there is an icon next to the comic navigation links which, when touched on a tablet, will display the alt-text, at long last making them accessible for readers using tablets or other mouseless formats.
- Guilded Age uses alt text in every comic, even guest comics. Mostly it's another joke, though for the chapter beginnings it's instead "The one where [something related to the chapter contents]."
- Then there's that one page with the ominous lack of Alt Text...
- Then there's that one page
- Gunnerkrigg Court doesn't technically have alt text, but the witty little comments below each comic serve the same purpose, and are just as easy to miss the first time you read it...especially because they don't start showing up until around chapter 5.
- The Handbook of Heroes has mouse-over text for each strip, usually containing an additional joke and sometimes providing additional information about the characters or world.
- Hero, all the text (except one chapter, for stylistic reasons) is in Alt Text. Dialogue, narration, everything.
- Homestuck doesn't ordinarily contain Alt Text (it would be highly impractical for its format), but a few updates starting here incorporate Alt Text in the banners. The Alt Text serves as the Author Avatar's voice while he parades through the banner in a quest to find the guy currently narrating the story and wrestle the narrative back from him. And then, starting here, we get to hear another character's voice for the first time. This is completely terrifying.
- Housepets! often uses the alt text as a secondary punchline for the strip.
I-P
- Equestrian themed webcomic The Idea of Order not only uses alt text, but also includes an additional punchline in the caption. For the inattentive that means three passes through the archive.
- Imprint Chronicles has alt text which is often the 'biggest' sound effect on the page, or a very short comment on a character or panel.
- Irregular Webcomic!:
- Author David Morgan-Mar argues against them in this strip, a parody of xkcd. While using it anyway, because he's parodying xkcd, and wants to get it right.
- His previous xkcd parody featured a Take That! against alt text in the alt text, which read "Some text that's too long to display when you mouseover it in Firefox, thus forcing you to check the source code to see it". Which, of course, showed up in Firefox as "Some text that's too long to display when you mouseover it in Firefox, thus forcing you to..."; Mozilla's long since fixed the issue and the tooltip displays fully now, ruining the joke.
- Author David Morgan-Mar argues against them in this strip
- Kill Six Billion Demons added Alt Text halfway through the first book, alongside having The Rant from the beginning. In contrast to Rants, Alt Text usually involves smaller In-Universe quotes, quips, in-jokes or youtube links to appropriate background music to the current panel.
- Knights Errant frequently has amusing comments hidden in the alt text.
- In Koan of the Day, a last thought is always given in the hover-text.
- L's Empire has some where the alt text for multiple pages need to be read in order to get the joke.
- Up until around 2016, every image on Legends of Localization had this. It's particularly impressive here, where even the many tiny sprites near the end of the page have unique alt text.
- Lucid Spring uses it, mostly to poke fun at the characters and the writing.
- Matt Comics's projects, such as The Redacverse and Huckleberry, feature alt text on many pages, usually for snarky jokes or stray thoughts.
- Miscellaneous Error uses Alt Text for additional punchlines.
- Molten Blade makes frequent use of title tags to include references and comments in strips that are otherwise intended to be serious.
- MS Paint Masterpieces: Well, sorta. There was never text to begin with (he used filler for that), but then Dave set up Disguntled Ferret's comic with a text function starting on #958 (it is only viewable if the comics are displayed one at a time).
- In a variation of the trope, Narbonic features hidden text in the filename of each strip: a word or words that, when placed in order by date, form a side story.
- Corny notes on the first page of Never Satisfied that they're going to use this on every page if it kills them. The alt text is usually used as an additional punchline, but sometimes provides additional background information.
- New School Kids has hover text, though usually only tangibly related to the plot. It's used for additional gags.
- The Noordegraaf Files: All the pages have it. Sometimes it's a joke, sometimes a reference, and sometimes it's just commentary.
- Not Enough Rings also uses alt text for additional jokes.
- Oglaf initially didn't utilize alt text as bonus info, but progressed to use alt text and later on to simultaneously using different ALT and TITLE text, making some people having to not only hover their mouse over the image but also look up the alt text in the source of the page.
- The Order of the Stick doesn't have actual Alt Text, but the comic titles often serve the function of the additional punchline, only making sense to the reader after the page in question has been read. Originally, the archive binger may have be somewhat confounded by the fact that the comic title doesn't display from the comic page itself, though the newest page title was always visible on the sidebar, and they were listed by title on the archive page. This was fixed in a 2021 site update, which put the title at the bottom of the page.
- Ever since this strip, Out at Home.
- Ozy and Millie used mouseover text on the cast page, featuring quotes from the characters.
- Paranatural strips usually have Alt Text, though it's absent from some of the earlier pages.
- Please Forgive Me!!! started adding alt text on page 153. The alt text will never let you forget that.
- Michael Poe's Does Not Play Well With Others, as well as the newer strips in his Errant Story.
- Pokemon Abridgestery Dungeon does this in an interesting way: the alt text is a type of internal narration for Kip, acting as a sort of 'second voice' in his head. It's because it's a piece of Arceus, who implanted it there to nudge Kip in the directions where he would be the most help to the PMD world.
- Poppy O'Possum offers a second punchline or some commentary for each page.
- Precocious: Used mostly for Lampshade Hanging (especially in regard to lacking backgrounds, Spoof Aesops, and incredibly egregious puns).
- Princess Chroma has used alt text from the beginning.
Q-Z
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:
- The comic didn't use to have alt text but instead had and has a functionally similar votey comic, where mousing over (later clicking) the red button gives an extra picture with an extra punchline. It's like alt text for people too lazy to read. (But you still have to visit the website and thus give him ad hits. Clever.)
- The first few years didn't have votey comics, but the author starting going back and adding them. Several are about how he doesn't get the joke he wrote over ten years ago.
- In 2015 or so, it gained alt texts as well, which sometimes contain a joke but sometimes just name the comic.
- The comic didn't use to have alt text but instead had and has a functionally similar votey comic, where mousing over (later clicking) the red button gives an extra picture with an extra punchline. It's like alt text for people too lazy to read. (But you still have to visit the website and thus give him ad hits. Clever.)
- Selkie sometimes does this, calling it "Secret Director Commentary".
- Shortpacked! also started doing this. The text on both is often a secondary joke or meta explanations/warnings/information.
- Sidequest Story uses this trope for additional commentary and dialogue for its pages.
- Skin Deep started adding them from the Exchanges: Heartaches storyline onwards.
- Sleepless Domain typically uses alt text for extra jokes. However, the alt text goes away almost entirely during the darker parts of the comic, namely when the Purple One, aka Goops appears on screen. The sole exception is Cassidy's Dying Moment of Awesome, in which she manages to stab Goops in the eye before vanishing.
- A Softer World allows you to either view alt text in the traditional way or by clicking on the comic, which causes a window to appear displaying the text. If you view it the traditional way, it may be entertaining for the easily-entertained to find a spot to hover which will cause the alt text to appear in a logical and aesthetically pleasing location respective of the actual comic.
- Something*Positive has little comments similar to alt text printed in plain sight at the bottom of the comics. As does Multi Plex and ImprintChronicles, with snarky comments left by the creator.
- Star Impact has little quips for all but the earliest pages, which often constitute Lampshade Hangings and/or Shout-Outs.
- Suppression has some truly great Alt Text, such as here and here.
- Tea House starts using this early in chapter 3.
- Thornsaddle has alt text for most of its strips, especially the earlier one.
- Three Summers Strong warns the user that there are Alt Texts in its slogan, so that the reader knows they are part of the joke.
- Tripping Over You has alt-text comments on almost every page, usually in the form of a character making an Aside Comment or continuing the dialogue on the page.
- Unity is generally a serious, sci-fi/drama comic — except in the alt text.
- The Way of the Metagamer not only has title= text, but has a character to read the title= text. The first presenter was Titular, replaced later on by Ebony Nauss.
- We Are The Wyrecats uses alt-texts mainly as a means for the author to provide additional commentary or make dry quips.
- Whomp! started using alt text for additional jokes (or as the author calls them "Secret Words") in this comic.Prior to this the text only displayed the comics title. The text can also be found by clicking the "Secret Words" button at the bottom of the comic.
- Wondermark uses its alt text as a secondary punchline, which is sometimes funnier than the first one.
- Woo Hoo! has additional punchline alt-text on every page.
- The Word Weary has alt text in every comic. Whether or not it's actually funny.
- xkcd alt text is perhaps the most famous of the "extra punchline" genre; read the comments on the above fix for Firefox 2, and you'll find xkcd readers seem to be its primary market. The spin-off blog initially didn't have any, although this changed soon after. Initially all the tooltips were simple descriptions of the images (but still using title= instead of alt=), but gradually between "Tie Vote" and "Steak Drop," they, too, became extra punchlines.
- Yellow Brick Ramble, a comic-adaptation of the second Oz novel, has a title text pop-up on every episode. They are usually used for another The Rant style punchline or silly observation that doesn't appear in the actual rant. This is only on the main site, however. The mirrors on Webtoon and other sites don't have alt text.
- Most comic pages on the main Yokoka's Quest site have alt text. The same comic pages on Webtoons and Tapastic lack this feature.
Non-Webcomic Examples
Video Games
- A variation in Distorted Travesty, which uses Game Maker's ability to change the text in the title bar for each room to provide developer's commentary (or meta jokes) if the game's played in Windowed Mode.
Web Original
- The Cutting Room Floor, a wiki covering removed content in Video Games, often adds a silly joke to the images. Since it's a freely-editable wiki, the humor value varies.
- The header images for abridged scripts at The Editing Room all contain a mean pun on the film's title, the better for you to mock them with.
- IT-HE Software does this from time to time, often to cram yet another Shout-Out in.
- On the news site Japanator, Ben Huber's Yotsuba&! comics have alt text.
- OAFEnet reviews begin with straightforward alt text naming the subject of the review, then quickly degenerate into name-calling, in-jokes and even running gags. Yes, alt text-only running gags.
- Thinkgeek, being a geeky store, used to hide little jokes in the thumbnails on the gallery pages. They've stopped doing that, though.
- TV Tropes, as mentioned earlier.
Web Video
- On the website for Atop the Fourth Wall, alt text appears when you position the cursor over the logo. This includes some running gags ("I AM A MAN! (punch)"), call-backs to his reviews ("Snowflame feels no pain"), and even some Self-Deprecation ("My claim to fame: being punched by The Angry Video Game Nerd once").