Keywords vs. Caption

Back in iPhoto days and after moving to Aperture a couple years ago, I used the "Keyword" field to record the personal names of those in my shots (family, friends, etc.). This has resulted in a long list of keywords, even though some keywords only appear once or twice in my thousands of pictures.

I then read that the "Keyword" field should be limited to generic terms, such as "family" or "friends," and that specifics (like personal names) should be used in the "Caption" field. Makes sense, so I started the editing my images.

But I am finding keywords to be much easier to work with when editing large numbers of images. Using the "Batch Change" command to append data works poorly for captions. Appending keywords automatically separates them with commas, but not for captions. For example, appending "John Smith" to the caption field results in images with existing caption data looking like this: "Mary JonesJohn Smith." I could append ", John Smith" but this look dumb for images with no previous data in them.

I'm open to recommendations and suggestions. What is the best way for handling personal names? Also, does Aperture have a "Search and Replace" feature for the Caption field --- say for correcting misspelled names across multiple images.

Thanks in advance.

Bill