You’ve probably seen Lorem Ipsum text before. It looks like a vast amount of random Latin, but when translated into English, it’s mostly just gobbledygook. It’s still technically Latin, since some parts of it can be translated, it’s not all fake. But Lorem Ipsum’s use has been floating around for centuries pretty much.
What do you use it for?
Lroem Ipsum is not really real text, but it’s most common use is to be used as placeholder text. Whether it’s for an art project or a website, the Lorem Ipsum text can be used to test out how something looks, without having to worry about the text being legible. It fills out the space and acts as a placeholder until your proper text is ready. This can come in very useful for things like magazine layouts, especially since there are paragraphs and paragraphs of available Lorem Ipsum text. Once you’ve got your own content sorted, all you have to do is replace the Lorem Ipsum text with your own copy.
Lorem ipsum is improper Latin text to indicate visual text without context. This can be used as placeholder text to be filled in later or to give the illusion of there being a fully worded section of text. This is most commonly used in graphic design, web design, and you can even occasionally see the concept in movies on newspapers for physical props that aren’t in focus.
The Lorem Ipsum text became popular in modern times because of its use on Letraset. Lorem Ipsum in pre-computer era printing was used for applying to transfer sheets as disposable fill-in text that in layout templates before designers had the print ready paragraphs of texts from writers for magazines, flyers, or any other kind of printable document. In the 1980s, it was later adopted to use online for word-processing templates and things like Microsoft Word. This is still used in modern times on digital as dummy/placeholder text to be replaced once the real content is added. For example, many themes for WordPress use Lorem Ipsum to fill out their previews and templates.
Where did it come from?
Turns out though, it’s not actually completely nonsensical. Lorem Ipsum is actually a corruption of Cicero’s ‘De finibus bonorum et malorum’, written in the first century BC, with words added, removed and somewhat scrambled to make it obviously nonsensical.
Here is an example of one paragraph of Lorem Ipsum:
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce facilisis, enim dignissim rutrum fringilla, augue sapien imperdiet sem, ac auctor nibh justo vel dolor. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Curabitur ex odio, eleifend pharetra metus commodo, feugiat semper libero. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Praesent eu felis id massa imperdiet lacinia.”
Of course, that’s just the first paragraph. There are many more paragraphs, and there are also plenty of websites that will generate Lorem Ipsum text for you. Many of which you can then copy and paste within your own work. Heck, search engines like Google and Duck Duck Go will instantly give you a few lines of Lorem Ipsum text; making it nice and easy to get a hold of. These days, Lorem Ipsum is more popular than ever. You can see it in all sorts of media, online and offline.