Lorem Ipsum

The contemporary use of Lorem Ipsum refers to portions of text purposed as a type of filler for design layouts in the introductory, pre-finished phase.

Applied as a filler for text, Lorem Ipsum allows people to view how a layout might appear in the completion phase when the appropriate text is used.

As such, bloggers have many uses for it. But using it can be a pain unless you have the right tools to help you.

Lorem Ipsum is used by people within many industries, most notably within the publishing, typesetting, and graphic design fields.

Lorem Ipsum provides creators a view of what their finished products might look like by providing realistic appearing content without reliance on meaningful text.

Consequently, designers and publishers can focus on the formatting and visual aspects of their projects before the production of actual content.

Other Names for Lorem Ipsum

Before we dive into Lorem Ipsum, it is good to remember that it is often called something else:

• Filler text
• Blind text
• Mock text
• Placeholder text
• Greeked text
• Replacement text
• Dummy text

An Interesting History

The history of Lorem Ipsum is really interesting.

It’s Latin — Sorta

One thing that no one questions is that Lerem Ipsum is based upon Latin. What’s more, that Latin dates back to 45 BCE in Cicero’s first book of De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (“On the Extremes of Good and Evil”).

There are a few passages taken from the book. But the main one — that includes “lorem ipsum” — is “qui dolorem ipsum.” According to Google Translate, this means “their distressing anguish and the very.”

When It Became Dummy Text

At one time, Lorem Ipsum was thought to be nonsense words. But in the late 1990s, Richard McClintock found the phrase in the 1914 edition of The Loeb Classical Library De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum.

In it, on page 35, the last word is “dolorem.” However, it is hyphenated. So “do-” is on page 35 and “lorem ipsum” is at the top of page 36. So he used this information to find the other parts of Lorem Ipsum.

First Try: 400 Years

At first, McClintock thought the use of Lorem Ipsum dated back over 400 years.

But this belief was based on the memory of seeing very old metal type samples. But when he looked again, he could not find them.

Lorem Ipsum Is Newer

Latraset dry-transfer lettering sheet cropped for image in public domain

His work, and later work by Philippe Cibois, showed that Lorem Ipsum started to be used as a text placeholder seemed to date much later.

They seem to have come from there use on Letraset transfer sheets. These are sheets graphic artists used before computers where they would cut out letters (or in this case, whole phrases). The letters were adhesive-backed, so they could simply be attached to the design page.

Since Letraset opened for business in 1959, most people think Lorem Ipsum started in the 1960s. One thing is certain: it was some time after 1914.

Pagemaker and Beyond

Use of Lorum Ipsum really took off in the 1980s when Aldus (later Adobe) Pagemaker and other computer desktop publishing programs used it.

That’s when it became a real standard. Now it is used in any number of industries and their respective applications.

Quick Copy and Paste

Sometimes, rather than using a tool, it is easier to just copy and paste standard Lorem Ipsum into your documents. So we’ve put together a couple of examples for you.

Plain Text

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem.

Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Integer tincidunt.

Cras dapibus. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Donec vitae sapien ut libero venenatis faucibus. Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui.

Etiam rhoncus. Maecenas tempus, tellus eget condimentum rhoncus, sem quam semper libero, sit amet adipiscing sem neque sed ipsum. Nam quam nunc, blandit vel, luctus pulvinar, hendrerit id, lorem.

Maecenas nec odio et ante tincidunt tempus.

Stylized Text

Lorem ipsum

Dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim.

1. Donec pede justo
2. Fringilla vel
3. Aliquet nec
4. Vulputate eget
5. Arcu.

In enim justo

Rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus.

Aenean vulputate natoque eleifend tellus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet.

HTML

<h1>Lorem ipsum</h1>
<p>Dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nullam <em>dictum</em> felis eu pede mollis pretium. Aenean massa. Cum sociis <a href=”#”>natoque penatibus et magnis</a> dis parturient montes, <a href=”#”>nascetur ridiculus mus</a>.</p>
<p>Aenean <em>commodo ligula</em> eget dolor. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla <strong>consequat massa</strong> quis enim.</p>
<ol>
<li>Donec pede justo</li>
<li>Fringilla vel</li>
<li>Aliquet nec</li>
<li>Vulputate eget</li>
<li>Arcu.</li>
</ol>
<h2>In enim justo</h2>
<p>Rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus.</p>
<p>Aenean vulputate <a href=”#”>natoque eleifend tellus</a>. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. <strong>Aliquam lorem ante</strong>, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus <a href=”#”>viverra nulla</a> ut metus varius laoreet.</p>

Lorem Ipsum Tools

There are a lot of tools to allow you to use Lorem Ipsum easily. We’ve categorized the tools by the way you work.

Word Processor Plugins

• Microsoft Word: you can create Lorem Ipsum-style text in Word 2007 and later by inserting =lorem() as a paragraph by itself.
• Libre Office: go to Tools-Autotext; in a dialog box that appears, you will find Lorem Ipsum under Standard; when it is selected, click Insert.
• Openoffice.org: it has a convenient extension referred to as Magenta Lorem Ipsum Generator, which requires a quick installation onto a user’s toolbar and can be readily used to insert up to twenty-five paragraphs
• Google Docs: the Proprietary Lorem Generator is a plug-in available for Google Chrome users that allows web publishers and designers of all types to generate Lorem Ipsum text

Sublime Text editor screenshot via Sublime Text

Lorem Ipsum for Developers

• Sublime Text: will insert a full-sized Lorem Ipsum paragraph while also providing the users a convenient keyboard shortcut to inject two hundred words at a time.
• Emmet: this Lorem Ipsum generator is available via installation and is a favored toolkit amongst graphic designers and web-development professionals. There are versions for most of the popular editors.
• Toolbucket: this plugin for Notepad++ generates Lorem Ipsum text while allowing for base-64 style coding and a change indentation dialog, along with a plethora of other features.

CMS Plugins and Extensions

People now have more use of Lorem Ipsum when working on a Content Management System (CMS) than they do anywhere else. Here are plugins and extensions for the top 3 CMSs: WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

WordPress

• FakerPress: enables users to install a Lorem Ipsum generator that instantly creates dummy categories, post titles, and taglines
• Lorem Ipsum Dummy Shortcode: The Lorem Ipsum Dummy Shortcode service is a “seeded” dummy article generator that accomplishes the dual tasks of generating Lorem Ipsum shortcoding but also full-length HTML articles and pages

Joomla

• Dummy Content: This easy-to-use application creates dummy content in a flash via the Joomla system plug-in’s editing button. Randomized filler copy can be used in articles or any other item intended for written content

Drupal

• Drupal Ipsum: a helpful comparison for users needing to generate greeked text quickly and effortlessly, Drupal’s plug-in manager allows for an array of Lorem Ipsum provider entities that are entirely pluggable, thus rendering any changes to existing work seamlessly.

Loripsum.net homepage via Loripsum.net

Web-based Lorem Ipsum Generators

There are many standalone  Lorem Ipsum generators. Here is a list of some of our favorites.

• Blind Text Generator: a web application that automatically displays Lorem Ipsum (and several other — some fanciful — options), which allows you to set the number of words and paragraphs as well as whether to add p HTML tags and how to style them
• DummyText: free program that uses JavaScript that gives you complete control over your webpages
• Lorem Ipsum: allows you to select the number of paragraphs, words, bytes, or lists; it then displays them so that you can copy and paste them into your pages
• Loripsum.net: this generator gives you a lot of options: number of paragraphs, paragraph lengths, different kinds of lists, and more
• Office Ipsum: this is a very simple generator that only lets you select the number of paragraphs, but it also includes what it calls Office Ipsum (things you hear in meetings) and Client Ipsum (things clients say, like “How much will it cost?”).
• Placeholder.com: although it doesn’t insert Lorem Ipsum, Placeholder.com is the graphical equivalent of it. It puts placeholder images into your designs. You just enter the image size at the end of the URL and it is entered into your page. It couldn’t be easier. For example, this inserts an image that is 823 by 201 pixels:
  https://via.placeholder.com/823x201
• Professional Lorem Ipsum Generator for Typographers: website that allows you to generate the dummy text (Lorem Ipsum is the default, but there are other options); there are various other options including whether to display or download the result as text or HTML

Summary

Lorem Ipsum is the dummy text of choice among most professionals in the design, production, and publishing industries.

It creates a placemark within copy and print projects that are recognizably garbled, yet simultaneously understood to be readable English.

With the tools in this article, you should be able to easily create webpage designs before you have content to fill it.

Have a favorite tool we missed? Let us know in the comments, thanks!