Format Captions in R Markdown for Word Output - r

Question

Default R Markdown captions in Word appear as:
Figure 1: Figure Title
Table 1: Table Title
I would like to format my captions so that the Figure 1/Table 1 is bold and the title is italic on the next line. This is the APA style of captions:
Figure 1
Figure Title
I have been trying to figure out an easy way to do this, but can't seem to find a solution. (If figure captions can be above figure, rather than below, that would also be great!). Here is a minimal reprex:
---
title: "Untitled"
author: "Test"
date: "11/8/2020"
output:
bookdown::word_document2: default
---
{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
library(tidyverse)
library(flextable)
{r table, tab.cap="Descriptives", echo=FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE}
psych::describe(cars) %>%
as.data.frame() %>%
flextable() %>%
set_table_properties(layout = "autofit", width = 1)
{r fig, fig.cap="Pressure Figure", echo=FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE}
plot(pressure)

Answer 1

For tables you can do it with officedown, officer and flextable packages, styling in reference_doxc, and by taking the advantage of "\n\n" for tables.
In yaml in the pre argument you set up a prefix for every table and a separator between the number and the title itself.
---
title: "Untitled"
author: "Test"
date: "11/8/2020"
output:
officedown::rdocx_document:
tables:
caption:
pre: 'Table '
sep: ''
---
With
tab.cap.fp_text = officer::fp_text_lite()
you can define the formatting of the caption prefix. In APA style it would be bold without italics, preferrably configured in the global knitr options, e.g.
knitr::opts_chunk$set(tab.cap.fp_text = officer::fp_text_lite(italic = FALSE, bold = TRUE))
And you add
"\n\n"
to the table caption to produce a new line
{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, tab.cap.fp_text = officer::fp_text_lite(italic = FALSE, bold = TRUE))
library(tidyverse)
library(flextable)
{r table, tab.cap="\n\nDescriptives", echo=FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE}
psych::describe(cars) %>%
as.data.frame() %>%
flextable() %>%
set_table_properties(layout = "autofit", width = 1)
The last thing is to create a reference_doxc in which you add italics to the table caption style. The caption prefix is not affected, as you control it with the knitr options.