What is Lorem Ipsum?
Lorem Ipsum is standard sample text of the design, development, printing and typesetting industries. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Why do we use it?
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
Where does it come from?
Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source.
Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.
The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.
A sample of modern randomly generated dummy text is included below.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam eget arcu ipsum. Duis ac velit nulla. Praesent imperdiet eleifend leo, eu rhoncus odio efficitur eget. Etiam eget diam quis nulla gravida eleifend. Nulla at consectetur libero, eu porttitor felis. Duis ut dignissim tortor. Cras nec sem iaculis mi rutrum fermentum eu at quam. Proin vitae iaculis leo, ullamcorper congue sem. Ut quis tincidunt neque, vitae tincidunt mi. Suspendisse porta id quam eu elementum. Cras porta eros eget lorem tempus, vel venenatis est consectetur. Nam luctus at nisl in laoreet. Mauris ac ultricies ipsum, nec faucibus velit. Mauris eget lectus urna. Cras ipsum nunc, ultrices lacinia dapibus ut, aliquet a magna. Nunc at vehicula sapien, ut gravida ipsum.
Nulla finibus condimentum lobortis. Integer sit amet dictum diam. Donec vitae sagittis est, sit amet venenatis leo.
Etiam leo lorem, rhoncus quis rhoncus id, varius convallis magna. Donec venenatis tincidunt fermentum. Sed a purus faucibus, bibendum sem a, auctor metus. Quisque dapibus eros ac risus placerat euismod. Suspendisse commodo sit amet lectus eget blandit. Duis non vulputate elit, eu gravida felis. Morbi eu magna ultrices, interdum felis at, varius urna. Mauris bibendum eget nisl quis varius. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
Sed quis velit quis massa semper porta. Nulla aliquam felis eget pulvinar cursus. Proin a diam non magna viverra cursus. Praesent ultricies placerat eros, sed consequat dolor dapibus sit amet. Donec in congue ipsum. Nulla ullamcorper magna est, ac viverra nunc volutpat eget. Integer vel dolor vel magna sodales ultricies. Curabitur pulvinar posuere molestie.
Donec aliquet magna eget dictum congue. Morbi sem dolor, facilisis quis consectetur quis, facilisis a ligula. Phasellus sed velit posuere, molestie ante a, aliquam dui. Fusce et dictum ex. Mauris congue ex in malesuada dictum. Integer lectus nunc, luctus nec rutrum a, blandit vel enim. Curabitur sed metus ac purus pretium interdum sed ut neque. Vivamus eu tortor tincidunt, placerat orci non, facilisis orci. Quisque gravida, leo ut lacinia hendrerit, dui turpis feugiat dolor, eu gravida est mi id arcu. Pellentesque tincidunt diam ac nisi condimentum auctor et at diam. Proin quam mi, tincidunt a porttitor vitae, fermentum eget arcu. Donec scelerisque maximus arcu, in eleifend enim aliquam sit amet. Maecenas vel augue convallis, rutrum ante malesuada, bibendum quam. Aliquam erat volutpat. Cras laoreet pulvinar mi nec posuere.
