What is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem ipsum is the printing and publishing industry’s standard placeholder or dummy text used for previewing graphic layouts. It acts as filler copy to demonstrate the visual hierarchy, fonts, and spacing of a webpage or document layout without distracting the viewer with readable text. [1, 2, 3]

The standard passage usually begins with:

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.” [1]

The History & Origins

Cicero’s Ethics: Despite looking like nonsense, the text is actually a corrupted version of a 1st-century BC classical Latin work. It is derived from the ancient Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero’s treatise on ethics titled De finibus bonorum et malorum (“On the Ends of Good and Evil”). [1, 2]

Meaning of the Words: The words are deliberately scrambled, altered, and stripped of meaning. However, the opening word “Lorem” is a truncation of dolorem, which translates directly to “pain itself” (dolorem ipsum). [1, 2, 3]

Modern Popularity: The text transitioned into the modern era in the 1960s when the graphic design company Letraset featured it on dry transfer sheets. It later became ubiquitous in the 1980s when software like Aldus PageMaker adopted it as the default digital dummy text. [1, 2, 3]