International Caps Lock Day – June 28 or October 22

International Caps Lock Day is celebrated twice in the annual calendar on October 22 and June 28. What ‘caps lock’ is you don’t need to explain it to you, after all, you just need to look down at the keyboard to guess the answer for yourself. But let’s try to understand why today the web and social networks will be overflowing with ‘shouted’ posts accompanied by the hashtags #CapsLockDay and #InternationalCapsLockDay.

International Caps Lock Day is an unofficial holiday—like Star Wars Day, Pi Day, and International Talk Like a Pirate Day—meaning that we don’t get the day off, but we do get a great excuse to ponder the subject for a day. Now the text typed in “CAPS LOCK” has acquired an emotional connotation on social networks – it symbolizes loud speech, a desire to attract attention, or convey particularly important information.

History

The International CAPS LOCK DAY goes back to an idea by the American Derek Arnold, who created the CAPS LOCK KEY day in 2000 as a parody of the internet community MetaFilter. He wanted people to take the use of the caps lock key seriously, given the implications for software engineering and multi-lingual constraints. According to founder Derek Arnold, “CAPS LOCK DAY IS A CELEBRATION OF LIFE AND FOREVER SCREAMING TEXT FOR ALL ETERNITY AND LOVE”.

28 June is chosen because this is dedicated to the memory of the American teleshopping presenter William Darrell “Billy” Mays, Jr. (1958 – 2009), who died on June 28, 2009. In reality, the date does not intend to praise the invention of the Caps Lock, but rather to make fun of all the megalomaniacs who use it to scream on the web. Billy became the Caps Lock icon just after revealing the reason for so many screams: as a child, he had unintentionally swallowed the Caps Lock key on the IBM PS / 2 keyboard he had at home.

Shortly after his death, the term Billy Mays Button came to be used in some areas of the United States to refer to the Caps Lock key on the computer keyboard, referring to his yelling during TV commercials and the fact that capitalization throughout the Internet or chat is considered an expression of screaming. Of course, against the background of the INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY, Arnold took up this with thanks.

22 October has many other celebrations like the UK also celebrating National Nut Day and World Stuttering Awareness Day. In any case, it has nothing to do with Australian Wombat Day or the US National Color Day – Arnold provides a reason at least for the second date on June 28th.

In reality, according to the American, International CAPS LOCK DAY is nothing more than a testimony to the stubbornness and intolerance of the western world. After all, the majority of the world’s population writes in texts that do NOT differentiate between upper and lower case. And that’s exactly why you should use this curious holiday to laugh at any idiot who thinks they are breaking local typographic conventions on June 28th or October 22nd.

How to participate in Caps Lock Day

For those who want to join the celebrations, it is sufficient to publish on social networks a message written in CAPITAL LETTERS seasoned with hashtags #CapsLockDay and #InternationalCapsLockDay, but since not everyone is aware of the background it would also be appropriate to explain them to friends.

We’ll grab this occasion to remind you that if you have accidentally typed something in all caps in Microsoft Word, the very handy Shift-F3 shortcut will help get things back to normal.

Suggested Read: Important Days In October