Lorem Text
What is Lorem Ipsum?
Lorem Ipsum is a placeholder text commonly used in the printing and typesetting industry. Since the 1500s, it has been the standard dummy text when an unknown printer rearranged a collection of type to create a sample book. Despite technological advancements, it has remained largely unchanged and became widely known in the 1960s through the release of Letraset sheets featuring Lorem Ipsum. Today, it is frequently used in desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker, which includes various versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Why Do We Use It?
It’s a well-known fact that readers can be distracted by the actual content of a page while focusing on its layout. Lorem Ipsum helps solve this by providing a natural-looking distribution of letters that mimics standard English, making it easier to focus on design rather than content. As a result, many desktop publishing tools and web editors have adopted Lorem Ipsum as their default placeholder text. A simple search for "lorem ipsum" will reveal countless websites still using it. Over time, different variations of the text have appeared, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose to include humor or other elements.
Where Does It Come From?
Despite popular belief, Lorem Ipsum isn't just random text. Its origins trace back over 2,000 years to classical Latin literature from 45 BC. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, identified its source while researching the Latin word consectetur in ancient texts. He found that Lorem Ipsum is derived from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil), a philosophical work by Cicero written in 45 BC. This treatise on ethics was highly regarded during the Renaissance. The familiar opening phrase, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...," originates from section 1.10.32 of this text.
Original Text Example
The standard portion of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is shown below for reference. It includes sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from Cicero's "De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum", along with an English translation from the 1914 version by H. Rackham.
What is Lorem Ipsum?
Lorem Ipsum is placeholder text commonly used in the printing and typesetting industry. It has served as the industry's standard dummy text since the 1500s, when an unknown printer rearranged a galley of type to create a type specimen book. Over the centuries, it has remained largely unchanged, even with the advent of electronic typesetting. Its popularity surged in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets featuring Lorem Ipsum passages, and later through desktop publishing tools like Aldus PageMaker, which included it as a sample text.
Why do we use it?
Lorem Ipsum is used because it mimics the flow and structure of natural English text without being distracting. Unlike repetitive phrases like "Content here, content here," it offers a balanced distribution of letters, making it appear like readable English. This makes it ideal for use in design templates and layouts. Today, many desktop publishing software and web development tools default to Lorem Ipsum as placeholder text. A simple search for "lorem ipsum" reveals countless websites still in early development. Over time, various versions of the text have emerged, some altered intentionally to include humor or unique content.
Where does it come from?
Despite its modern applications, Lorem Ipsum originates from classical Latin literature, not random text. It traces back to de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum ("The Extremes of Good and Evil") by Cicero, written in 45 BC. Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar from Hampden-Sydney College, identified its source while examining the Latin word consectetur in a Lorem Ipsum excerpt. The text comes specifically from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero’s work, a philosophical treatise on ethics that gained significant attention during the Renaissance. The opening phrase, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet," is derived from a line in section 1.10.32.
For those interested, the traditional chunk of Lorem Ipsum text used since the 1500s, along with English translations from the 1914 H. Rackham version of Cicero’s work, is provided below.
