INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY

What the day is

International Caps Lock Day is observed on October 22. It is a self-proclaimed internet holiday, started as a joke website in the early 2000s, and its original home page was an extended parody of itself written almost entirely in capital letters. Nothing about it is official or serious, and that is the point.

The target of the joke is a single key. Caps Lock sits in one of the most prominent spots on the keyboard, directly beside the letters people type most, and almost everyone has at some point switched it on by accident and typed a whole sentence in capitals before noticing.

Origin and background

The key itself descends from the shift lock on mechanical typewriters, which physically held the carriage in its upper position so that a typist could produce a run of capitals without holding a key down. Computer keyboards kept the idea, and the key stayed in the same place even as its usefulness faded. Most people now type in capitals only for acronyms, and a good many keyboard users remap or disable the key altogether to avoid the accidents.

Capital letters also carry a social meaning online. By long convention, text in all capitals is read as shouting, which is why people treat it as rude in emails and messages. Used sparingly it can show emphasis, and in a few settings, such as forms, labels and legal notices, capitals are normal. In most others, a message written entirely in capitals tends to read as louder and angrier than the writer intended.

How to take part

• Type one message in capitals on purpose, preferably to a friend who will find it funny.
• Notice how often you hit the key by accident, and consider remapping it in your computer's settings.
• Read a message aloud in its original capitals to hear how loud it sounds.
• Look for a keyboard with a sticky or worn Caps Lock key and give it a quiet moment of thanks.
• Share an old typewriter or keyboard story with someone, because the shift lock has a longer history than most people expect.