International CAPS LOCK DAY!!

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!!

Today has been proclaimed International Caps Lock Day, a fictional holiday that The Next Web blog said was first envisioned by Derek Arnold in 2000.

"International Caps Lock Day is in fact a testament to the small mindedness of certain Western individuals: the majority of the world's population writes in scripts which have no concept of letter casing," Arnold said.

While the day is meant to "mock CAPS LOCK cretins," as well as those who use poor grammar, the Inquisitr blog reported that there is actually another International Caps Lock Day that hasn't caught on as much. That is June 28, dedicated in honor of infomercial pitchman Billy Mays and first held on the day of his death in 2009.

The holiday has been popular on Twitter with thousands of tweets today. The holiday also has a website .

And International Caps Day also has rules, as reported by the UK Metro . While most use the all caps key, "there are occasional reports of people cheating by just holding down the shift key."

The Next Web included a word of caution for people to use their Caps Lock sparingly. "Once is funny, twice might get a smirk, any more and you are looking for the Internet equivalent of a punch in the face."

According to a post on Yahoo! Answers , all caps is considered the equivalent as screaming by many, partly because all caps gives an appearance of emphasis. It also makes text more difficult to read.

There are dangers to such free play, as discussed on the blog Gizmodo which shared a Yahoo! Answers post from a person who had accidentally turned the caps lock on and couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

"ALL MY FRIENDS THINK I AM MAD BECAUSE I AM SHOUTING AT THEM OVER THE INTERNET," the person wrote.

A respondent answered, "ITS FOREVER IRREVERSIBLE. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED TO ME."

Finally one person is standing their ground and not unlocking caps. Their tweeter states:

"I CAN'T LOG INTO GMAIL BECAUSE IT'S REJECTING MY PASSWORD. BECAUSE I'M NOT TURNING OFF CAPS LOCK. I STAND MY GROUND."