What does “lorum ipsum dolor sit” mean, and why is it seen in so many places?
You may have seen Latin text on a website or design and wondered what it is there for. Lorem Ipsum is simply placeholder text from the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s’, when an unknown printer took a selection of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It is used to allow people to focus on the design rather than the content.
The text reads as follows:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed pellentesque tempor placerat. Duis quis dolor in est tempor feugiat. Phasellus ultrices feugiat lacus, at venenatis leo vulputate et. Donec lobortis purus sit amet ultricies ultricies. Aliquam pharetra metus id orci consectetur fermentum. Fusce vehicula ullamcorper diam ac mattis. Cras laoreet ante ut risus varius, tincidunt consequat elit congue. In mauris turpis, posuere ut imperdiet at, blandit eu dolor. Donec at tincidunt felis, eget dictum eros. Proin laoreet, lacus vestibulum pellentesque lobortis, est nulla gravida dui, eu consectetur justo augue in nisi. Integer convallis vel metus non scelerisque. Proin a nisl vel eros malesuada fringilla at vel odio. Sed id consequat neque.
Unlike what many people think, Lorem Ipsum is not just random text. It actually has its origins in a work of classical Latin literature from around 45 BC, making it more than 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, examined one of the less common Latin words, “consectetur”, found in a Lorem Ipsum passage. By tracing this word through classical literature, he uncovered its clear source. Lorem Ipsum is derived from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil), written by Cicero in 45 BC. This book is a philosophical text on ethics, widely read during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..,” is taken from section 1.10.32.
So, why do we use it? And, more importantly, WHEN do we use it?
It’s well known that readers can get distracted by the content of a page while examining its layout. The reason for using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a fairly regular distribution of letters, unlike the repetitive “Content here, content here,” which makes it resemble real English. Many desktop publishing tools and website editors now use Lorem Ipsum as the standard placeholder text, and searching for “lorem ipsum” will lead to numerous websites that are still in the early stages of development. Over the years, different versions of Lorem Ipsum have emerged, sometimes by accident and sometimes intentionally (with added humor or other tweaks).
You can find Lorum Ipsum, and further information on the subject for your projects at https://www.lipsum.com/
