When was the last time you deliberately used the Caps Lock key? You know, that little thing above the Shift key? The one that makes you yell on the internet or seem like someone who shouldn't be left around computers unsupervised? If your typing habits are anything like mine, the answer is, well, never.

As for any controversial thing on the internet, there's a movement against it. In 2006, the late Pieter Hintjens started a campaign called CAPSoff with the goal of abolishing the much-hated key once and for all. A quick look at Amazon's top-selling keyboards[1] reveals that he didn't succeed.

That's not to say that the Caps Lock key doesn't have its proponents. Fields like engineering make heavy use of capital letters and some keyboard layouts (like the Swiss German one) utilize it as a secondary dead key / modifier. And then there's Sean Wrona. He is one of the world's fastest typists, and he uses Caps Lock instead of Shift to capitalize letters. The absolute madman.[2] But do these uses really justify a prominent position on every standard keyboard layout?

Usage Data — or Lack Thereof

Now, my usual approach would be to bring cold, hard numbers into the matter. The team at IO Technologies tracked their keyboard usage for a week. The result? Caps Lock was the least used key with only 0.1 % of keystrokes. Now, the low sample size (eight participants) makes this anything but a broad study. If we did the same analysis at an engineering company, results would look way different.

Sadly, a comprehensive analysis of key usage is nowhere to be found. And so, the mystery of which keys are really needed and which are relics from the typewriter era — that made their way into modern computer keyboards by sheer force of habit alone — remains unsolved.

But even if data suggested that a sizable chunk of the population used the Caps Lock key, it's not a feasible substitute for standard, single-letter capitalization (sorry, Sean!). So, let's judge it by its main purpose: reducing finger strain while typing longer stretches of capitalized text.

Lock Keys and Placing

All keys can be grouped into various functions. The Caps Lock key is part of the lock keys subset that can toggle certain modes of the keyboard. The idea is that you press a lock key, do what you need with the altered layout, then revert to standard mode. No part of this process makes it necessary for a lock key to be placed in an easily reachable spot. If you'd have to switch modes frequently, the purpose of a lock key would be defeated.

Graph of keyboard with lock keys highlighted

Its siblings, Num Lock and Scroll Lock respect that and are positioned rather unobtrusively. Caps Lock, however, is the black sheep of the family. Its position next to the left little finger (using a standard ten-finger system) makes it one of the most-prominently placed non-letter keys[3] on the whole keyboard. In that, it's easier to reach than keys like Backspace, Return or Control.

Imagine if your car had the Disable Airbag button on the steering wheel.[4]

Users of the strangely popular text editor Emacs (that relies heavily on the Control key) suffer from repetitive strain injury so frequently it's also referred to as Emacs pinky. Their solution? Swap Control with a key that's both easier to reach and completely obsolete. Guess which?

But, but ... My Workflow!

But does it hurt anybody? Surely there must be users that rely heavily on Caps Lock. What about Sean Wrona!?

Comic on how every change breaks someone's workflow

Yes, adapting to change is difficult. Yes, it's hard to throw long-held standards overboard. But instead of forcing an unused key on 99 % of all users, let's remap it to a key that 100 % of all users use and let the few hardboiled Caps Lock aficionados be the one to remap their keyboard.

For decades now, the standard QWERTY keyboard layout has been in place. For decades now, it has remained mostly unchanged. We have evolved beyond typewriters, let's start evolving beyond a keyboard layout that was intended to prevent the jamming of type hammers.

Evil Begone

While an increasing amount of people are turning towards alternative, more modern keyboard layouts such as Dvorak (don't), Colemak, or Workman, most people are so used to the classic QWERTY layout (or whatever regional variant you use[5]) that this is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Of course, there's the possibility to remap the Caps Lock key to any key you like (the favorites being Backspace and Control) — and there's nothing wrong with that — but if the only way to have a useful keyboard layout is to customize it, there's something inherently wrong with the standard we are using.

But instead of changing the standard keyboard layout in one fell swoop, let's go one key at a time. In 2010, Google replaced the Caps Lock key with a Search key on its Chromebooks while the popular Happy Hacking keyboard put the Control key in the same spot. There's hope.

  1. At the time of writing this article, the most-sold keyboard without a Caps Lock key ranks at #43. If you can call it that at all as it's a hideous TV-remote-shaped abomination. It's intended for use on a Fire TV stick but would feel right at home as an N-Gage accessory. ↩︎

  2. Check out his YouTube videos. That's quite a sight to behold. ↩︎

  3. 'Prominently placed non-letter keys' needs to be its own Wikipedia category if it isn't already. ↩︎

  4. "I didn't mean to kill my co-driver, but I accidentally hit the wrong button. Oops." ↩︎

  5. I use the German QWERTZ layout and have to employ massive finger acrobatics just to CTRL+Z. Also, the German layout doesn't have Caps Lock but Shift Lock, which is even worse in that produces "mARIO" instead of "MARIO" when accidentally hit. Grrr. ↩︎

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