If you’ve ever used a desktop publishing program like Adobe PageMaker, you’ve probably seen some variation of Latin text, used as a placeholder for real text. Because most English-speakers can’t parse the Latin, it’s less distracting to them than English text, so its use makes it easier for a designer to concentrate on page layout.
There are many variations on this Latin text, known as Lorem Ipsum, but it generally starts something like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
It turns out that this standard typesetting tool, in use since the 1500s, is actually a passage from Cicero’s de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil), written in 45 BC.
Lipsum is a great site describing the history of Lorem Ipsum (or Lipsum for short). It also provides a Lorem Ipsum generator. Need a few paragraphs of random Latin text? Fill in a text box, click a button, and presto! — reams of Latin fill your screen. The generator is a great tool for Web design, and I plan to use it the next time I’m fiddling with a page that doesn’t yet have any content.
