Lorem ipsum
Lorem ipsum (/ˌlɔː.rəm ˈɪp.səm/ LOR-əm IP-səm) is a dummy or placeholder text commonly used in graphic design, publishing, and web development to fill empty spaces in a layout that does not yet have content.
Lorem ipsum is typically a corrupted version of De finibus bonorum et malorum, a 1st-century BC text by the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, with words altered, added, and removed to make it nonsensical and improper Latin. The first two words themselves are a truncation of dolorem ipsum ("pain itself").
Versions of the Lorem ipsum text have been used in typesetting at least since the 1960s, when it was popularized by advertisements for Letraset transfer sheets.[1] Lorem ipsum was introduced to the digital world in the mid-1980s, when Aldus employed it in graphic and word-processing templates for its desktop publishing program PageMaker. Other popular word processors, including Pages and Microsoft Word, have since adopted Lorem ipsum,[2] as have many LaTeX packages,[3][4][5] web content managers such as Joomla! and WordPress, and CSS libraries such as Semantic UI.
Example text
[edit]A common form of Lorem ipsum reads:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing 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.
Source text
[edit]The Lorem ipsum text is derived from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum.[6][7] The physical source may have been the 1914 Loeb Classical Library edition of De finibus, where the Latin text, presented on the left-hand (even) pages, breaks off on page 34 with "Neque porro quisquam est qui do-" and continues on page 36 with "lorem ipsum ...", suggesting that the galley type of that page was mixed up to make the dummy text seen today.[1]
The discovery of the text's origin is attributed to Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar at Hampden–Sydney College. McClintock connected Lorem ipsum to Cicero's writing sometime before 1982 while searching for instances of the Latin word consectetur, which was rarely used in classical literature.[2] McClintock first published his discovery in a 1994 letter to the editor of Before & After magazine,[8] contesting the editor's earlier claim that Lorem ipsum held no meaning.[2]
The relevant section of Cicero as printed in the source is reproduced below with fragments used in Lorem ipsum highlighted. Letters in brackets were added to Lorem ipsum and were not present in the source text:
What follows is H. Rackham's translation, as printed in the 1914 Loeb edition, with words at least partially represented in Lorem ipsum highlighted:[7]
See also
[edit]- Asemic writing – Wordless open semantic form of writing
- Etaoin shrdlu – Common metal-type printing error
- Gibberish – Nonsensical speech or writing
- Hamburgevons – Text used as a sample for assessing fonts
- Indian-head test pattern – Television test card
- Lenna – Unauthorized standard test image
- Li Europan lingues – Placeholder text in Interlingue
- Metasyntactic variable – Placeholder term used in computer science
- Pangram – Sentence using every letter of alphabet
- The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog – Sentence containing all letters of the English alphabet
- Shibboleth – Custom or tradition that distinguishes one group from another
- "To come" – Phrase used in publishing to indicate missing material
- Utah teapot – Computer graphics 3D reference and test model
References
[edit]- ^ a b Cibois, Philippe (2012-06-03). "Lorem ipsum: nouvel état de la question". L'intelligence du monde. L'Institut français. Retrieved 2017-04-07.
- ^ a b c Adams, Cecil (February 2001). "What does the filler text 'lorem ipsum' mean?". The Straight Dope. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
- ^ "LaTeX lipsum package". Retrieved 23 September 2017.
- ^ "LaTeX blind text package". Retrieved 23 September 2017.
- ^ "How to insert sample text into a document in Word". Microsoft Support. 18 September 2011. Archived from the original on 12 January 2012. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
- ^ "Description of the "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" text that appears in Word Help". support.microsoft.com. Retrieved 2007-03-22.
- ^ a b Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Rackham, H. (1914). De finibus bonorum et malorum (in Latin and English). New York: Macmillan Co. p. 36 (Book I ix 32).
- ^ Before & After 4:2, according to Norman Walsh. "Frequently Asked Questions About Fonts". Retrieved 2023-05-12.
External links
[edit]
Definitions from Wiktionary
Media from Commons
Texts from Wikisource
- The original De finibus bonorum et malorum (Book 1) from Cicero, on Latin Wikisource
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