What is Lorem Ipsum? Well, it’s dummy, or placeholder, text
historically used in the printing business.
You can find it on software templates now as well, including blog
templates. Lorem Ipsum appears to most
to be nonsense wording, such as:
Ea eam
labores imperdiet, apeirian democritum ei nam, doming neglegentur ad vis. Ne
malorum ceteros feugait quo, ius ea liber offendit placerat, est habemus
aliquyam legendos id. Eam no corpora maluisset definitiones, eam mucius malorum
id. Quo ea idque commodo utroque, per ex eros etiam accumsan.
From what source did this odd
nonsense language originate? Lipsum.com
explains that the lines come from The
Extremes of Good and Evil by Cicero, written in 45 B.C. The line begins, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
. . .” Roughly translated, Lorem Ipsum means “Pain itself.” The essay from
Cicero addresses the partaking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. If you want
to see a full translation of the passage, click HERE.
Odd to think that the words “pain
itself” were chosen to grace the pages of printing, newsletter, and blog
templates. And why choose text from over 2000 years ago? Why not use the lyrics
of Rapture by Blondie? Plenty of
those are nonsense too.
Just because...
Typically, Lorem Ipsum
generators use a vocabulary of over 200 Latin words somewhat randomly
arranged. (Check out Wikipedia’s entry
on Lorem
Ipsum as well.)
Lorum Ipsum is not the only dummy
text around, however. If you much prefer English gobbledygook, you can try Malevole’s text generator. Or Lorem Ipsum Generator 3 permits
you to choose what language your gibberish appears in. The Sitepoint
website links to other dummy text generators as well.
Why on earth does this
fascinate me? I find words of all kinds intriguing, and the use of placeholder
text indicates that words and letters are important even if they mean nothing
at all.
It’s a bit like hearing a
toddler babble. Young children try out sounds and combinations of sounds until
they stumble upon something that seems to have meaning to the adults around
them. Then they repeat it. The goo-goos and ga-gas are like placeholder
language, until the real thing replaces the babbling.
Moreover, we understand at some
basic level that the presentation of text is important, so that we want to see
how the words look on the page even before we have specific sentences ready to
go. Admittedly, Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address on an envelope, but it
still matters how a printed page looks if you want readers to devour it. Using Latin or other dummy text reminds us
how key it is to have our words be accessible to others. It is not enough to
speak brilliance to ourselves. We want others to read our words.
Frankly, I’m glad that there
was placeholder text so I could view how the blog page would look once I came
up with something to say. Have you used
Lorem Ipsum or other dummy text for any purpose? What do you know about text
generators? Might you ever use them? Do you know Latin? Do you think it matters
how text is presented to readers? Is content or presentation more important?
