can I bind monitor shutdown to a hotkey?

I know that may sound really weird but let me explain:

In the history of my linux installs, the monitor going down due to inactivity has been a "sometimes" affair. On my desktop, it's not a biggie, as I just turn the monitors off before leaving the room. Now I have linux on my laptop(yay!) and I can't turn the monitor off since I no longer have a power switch :) .

The laptop is on overnight since I'm running a network server on it for testing and I can see that sometimes, the screen never shuts down and on other nights, it works as intended.

So my question: Is there a way to bind the screen shutdown to a hotkey? I know that a keypress is supposed to bring the screen up, so it sounds kind of silly, but I was hoping that there was a script I might be able to run that will trigger the shutdown.

Thanks for any thoughts and suggestions you might have.

thanks,
json

<tapping the mic>

Is this thing on?

Hehe, alright guys. I'll find myself a support forum.

Thanks for everything.

ok even i leave my lapton on during the night for downloads . Its irritating to see the screen on without any work being done. I normally close the lid and the processing still continues thus saving the screens life . I hope this helps you .