International Caps Lock Day
don’t use caps lock for an entire day. that way, you can help others see that you don’t need to shout on the internet to get your point across.
Leverage International Caps Lock Day to promote digital etiquette, professional communication tools, or workplace productivity software through humorous, lowercase-focused messaging.
- Challenge: Can you write a professional email entirely in lowercase?
- Celebrate better internet manners—promote your communication platform or email client
- Keyboard humor: 'We're turning down the volume on shouting online'
International Caps Lock Day first came to pass in the year 2000, when Derek Arnold of Iowa decided that he, like so many other internet users, had simply had enough of people using all caps to emphasize themselves on the web. So he created International Caps Lock Day in the interest of poking fun at people who use this abomination of a typing style, and to finally bring some sanity to the net.
There are some protocols that make it appropriate to post in all Caps, such as when posting as part of a weather monitoring network. In this rare and perhaps singular case, all caps are how you indicate that something is in fact of importance, and with its collection of acronyms and shorthand makes sure its clear.
We can also delve a little bit deeper into the history of this controversial keyboard button. On mechanical typewriters, the Caps Lock key was first the Shift lock key. One of the earlier innovations in the use of typewriters saw a second character being added to each typebar. This caused the number of characters that a person was able to type to be doubled with the same number of keys being used.
The second character was located above the first on each typebar’s face, and the Shift key would cause the apparatus in its entirety to move, physically shifting the typebars position relative to the ribbon of inx. Just like in contemporary keyboards for computers today, the shifted position was used to create secondary characters and product capitals.
The invention of the Shift lock key was for the purpose of maintaining the shift operation indefinitely without continual effort. The typebars were mechanically locked in a shifted position, resulting in the upper character being typed when any key was pressed.
This was also supposed to lower finger muscle pain caused by repetitive typing because it could be challenging to hold the shift down for more than two or three consecutive strokes prior to this.
On mechanical typewriters, you would typically hit both Lock and Shift at the same time. After this, you press shift by itself in order to release the lock.