The secret underground shadow government doesn't resort to typing with the caps lock on when they want to emphasize that something must be done "at all costs!"
Caps Lock. It's that key above the Shift key with a-million-and-one uses, from showing anger to messing up case-sensitive passwords. Those used to the Shift key may have iNCORRECT lOWERCASE lETTERS because of it.
Can be an indicator of a Large Ham character if this appears in a Visual Novel whenever said character is speaking.
Frequently combined with swearing to make an Atomic F-Bomb. Often mistakenly used as cruise control for "cool."
Generally speaking, using Caps Lock on the internet denotes screaming and is considered appropriate only as a means of occasional emphasis, including on this Very Wiki.
Might overlap with Once More, with Volume!, as the repeated sentence in louder volume tends to be rendered in all caps.
Similarly to the trend mentioned in the article on all lowercase letters, going into the 2020s it's becoming decently popular to style album titles and the songs within them in all uppercase. It's especially common among rappers, likely starting with alternative-adjacent artists like Death Grips and JPEGMafia and later spreading to more mainstream acts like Kanye West and Playboi Carti.
Sub-Trope of Painting the Medium. Compare Think in Text. Contrast all lowercase letters.
EXAMPLES:
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ANIME & MANGA
- The Daichis - Earth's Defense Family:
- THE FAMILY'S DEFENSIVE ALLIANCE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK (地球防衛家族 オリジナルサウンドトラック, Chikyū Bōei Kazoku Original Soundtrack)The original soundtrack CD has the following in all caps: "FAMILY?", which is the jacket for the soundtrack, and all the text from the aforementioned title of the CD, "SHIGEO NAKA from THE SURF COASTERS" (barring the word "from") that is behind the jacket that shows Dai Daichi surfing on his Hyoer Board in the beach.
- Rolly's SAMURAI which is the opening theme which puts emphasis on the harsh nature of the Daichi family who is on the brink of collapse and their obligations to having to defend the earth. (STOP THE FIGHT!).
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: After his first defeat in Phantom Blood, Dio Brando took the mononym to be called DIO in all caps from Stardust Crusaders onwards.
FAN WORKS
- Chosen One's Adventure with Legendaries: Several Legendaries have this as their chat speaking style, including wonkyWindlass (Giratina), nightmareUnleaded (Darkrai), mordantConcept (Reshiram) and chasingMendacity (Zekrom).
- Dungeon Keeper of Love and Justice: This is how Ami's messages to Reaper, written by imp, are presented.
"KEEPER ARACHNE WAS DEFEATED. I AM UNINJURED. IS ALL WELL?
SO NOTED. HAVE YOU FELT ANY OTHER SCRYINGS SINCE I LEFT?" - HZD Terraforming Base-001 Text Communications Network: Erend seemingly cannot figure out how to turn off caps lock, despite his friends trying to explain it to him. On the one hand, he's always been Smarter Than You Look. On the other hand, when another Oseram gets added to the chat, he does the exact same thing, so maybe it's cultural.
- "I'm Not Jealous, I'm Studying The Competition": Yoru's inner monologue is written entirely in all caps and with No Punctuation Period to reflect her brutish, violence-loving personality and to make sure her thoughts are always visually distinct from Asa's.
LITERATURE
- Dungeon Crawler Carl: Donut always uses the chat system in all caps. Always. Later on, so does Samantha. Occasionally Donut slips up and types normally, showing that she can avoid it, but is doing her best to always stay in character as a cat who is so extra.
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Harry yells in ALL CAPS quite a lot here compared to other books. Having a Psychic Link to an Ax-Crazy sociopath who's deliberately trying to screw with him does wonders to your composure.
- Inquisition War: The Emperor speaks in all caps, presumably to convey his godlike and awe-inspiring nature.
- Jumanji: The instructions have rule D written in such a manner: "VERY IMPORTANT: ONCE A GAME OF JUMANJI IS STARTED IT WILL NOT BE OVER UNTIL ONE PLAYER REACHES THE GOLDEN CITY."
- Machine of Death: Nearly every story writes the Machine's predictions in all-caps, presumably to make them feel emphatic and mechanical.
- Starter Villain (2023): HERA TYPES IN ALL CAPS. JUSTIFIED IN THAT HER KEYBOARD IS SIZED FOR CAT PAWS AND SHE USES ALL FOUR PAWS TO TYPE, SO IT'S DIFFICULT TO HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY.
MUSIC
- divineruins: "THE LONELIEST NUMBER", "HA! DESERVED", and "NOMINAL VALUE" all have their names stylized with caps lock to show emphasis.
- Discussed in Mega Ran's track Miss Communication
, where he raps about how his love interest started freaking because he hit caps lock by accident in a text.
"Tone of voice can't be read in a text, I'd rather get on the phone instead and get it correct" - rueckus: "TENNY" has its name stylized with caps to emphasize the harsh nature of the song.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's music video for "White & Nerdy" has him vandalising the Atlantic Records Wikipedia page with a big fat "YOU SUCK!". Al has had issues with Atlantic refusing to release his parody of James Blunt's song "You're Beautiful".
VIDEO GAMES
- ANNO: Mutationem: Whenever the LIMEN crater is mentioned, its name is displayed as being all in caps to emphasize the otherworldly nature of its existence.
- The Battle Cats: THE SLOTH and THE FOLIVOREAN's names are written this way. The game describes both of them as being incredibly strong, but slow. Averted with Elder Sloth, whose name is written normally.
- All of the Archangels in Cassette Beasts speak in all caps, to empathize their booming, ethereal voices. Their dialogue also covers the screen in shaky text.
- Calasmos in Dragon Quest XI speaks this way, since he's a God of Evil and an Eldritch Abomination.
- Eastward: THE MIASMA is shown in all caps during dialogue segments when it gets brought up.
- Rekka in Hi-Fi RUSH utilizes this gratuitously. The first message from her that the player finds has her capitalizing all of the words just to make a point. A later message depicting a conversation between her and Roquefort indicates that she's unable to stop doing this because she broke her Caps Lock key.
Rekka: CAPS LOCK IS BROKEN! REKKA WORKS HARD AND TYPES HARD
- Hypnospace Outlaw: Any time Dylan Merchant — the dot-com-er geek who established Merchantsoft, The Alternet of Hypnospace, an internet you use while you sleep, and your boss — has his competence or hobbies questioned, he will immediately start PUTTING ON ALL CAPS TO YELL AT THE IDIOT WHO DID THIS. Two noticeable instances are when he bans you for taking down his illegal music downloads that were leading Merchantsoft to a lawsuit with the record industry that would have not survived, and when the trolling/hacker group he's a part of question the fact he's refusing to do QA for a game that has crashed your computing devices before... which leads directly into the deaths of four-to-six people after the game bricks the OS and overloads their brain activity.
- PHIGHTING!: Biograft's dialogue is written like this.
- In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, all of the big legendary Pokémon such as Dialga or Palkia speak like this constantly, even when they are not screaming.
WEBCOMICS
- Homestuck:
- Karkat always types in all caps, due to his caps-lock button being broken from jabbing it so much. It reflects how he talks in real life, where he tends to shout.
MY HATE IS THE LIFEBLOOD THAT PULSES THROUGH THE VEINS OF YOUR UNIVERSE. IT IS MY GIFT TO YOU. YOU'RE WELCOME FOR THAT. YOU UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF SHIT.
- Caliborn initially types in all caps with lowercase u's, the opposite of his sister Calliope who types in all lowercase with uppercase u's. After killing her, he switches to all uppercase like Karkat and in his sister's blood color.
- Karkat always types in all caps, due to his caps-lock button being broken from jabbing it so much. It reflects how he talks in real life, where he tends to shout.
WEB ORIGINAL
- Yuro: Usually, all of the letters in a guide video are capitalized.
WESTERN ANIMATION
- Steven Universe: In "Too Short to Ride", Peridot tweets on her tablet with caps lock on because if she didn't, "HOW WOULD YOU KNOW I'M SHOUTING?"
