Thursday, September 30, 2010

What is "Lorem Ipsum"?

Have you noticed that when you look at a sample blog or website template, it often has a string of unknown words beginning with "Lorem Ipsum"?  Here is an example:

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. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

It looks like Latin, doesn't it?  Well that's what I thought too!

The truth is, that it's actually nonsense words based on a latin text by a guy called Cicero (who wrote about the purpose of good and evil), but with words stripped out, and sometimes other words added.  You can find the details at Wikipedia.

The point of this is to demonstrate how the text will look, without distracting the viewer with meaningful words.  This technique has been used in typesetting since the 1960's  and possibly since the 1500's, when the printing press (and typesetting) first came into being.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting post, Carol. I never knew. I had been told it was Latin and since I don't speak/read/understand Latin, I believed! Thank you for bringing this bit of info to all uninformed readers.

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