Lorem ipsum has been the design and publishing industry’s standard placeholder text ever since the 1500’s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type from a work by the Roman philosopher Cicero to make a type specimen book. Amazingly, this Latin passage is still widely used today in the layout development process of both print and web communications. Here’s a sample:
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.”
But why is this actually used? Why not use stand-in copy or simply a scramble of letters instead?
When reviewing a page layout for assessment of its overall visual appeal, it has been proven that a reader will be distracted by content that is readable, even if it is dummy copy. And a mishmash of letters or an endlessly repeated phrase doesn’t provide an accurate representation of how the words will be seen in the final layout.
Lorem ipsum is, unless you’re a Latin Studies scholar, unreadable to nearly everyone—but its distribution of words is a close representation of written English. As a result, it doesn’t disrupt the attention of people reviewing a layout while providing assurance that the final type won’t look drastically different either.
And if you’re wondering what the lorem ipsum passage actually means, here’s a rough translation of some of it:
“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.”
Check out this article for some additional insights.