Lorem Ip­sum is sim­ply dum­my text of 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 gal­ley of type and scram­bled it to make a type spe­ci­men book. It has sur­vi­ved not only five cen­tu­ries, but also the leap into elec­tro­nic ty­pe­set­ting, re­mai­ning es­sen­ti­al­ly un­ch­an­ged. It was po­pu­la­ri­sed in the 1960s with the re­lease of Le­tra­set sheets con­tai­ning Lo­rem Ip­sum pas­sa­ges, and more re­cent­ly with desk­top pu­bli­shing soft­ware like Al­dus Pa­ge­Ma­ker in­clu­ding ver­si­ons of Lo­rem Ipsum.

It is a long es­tab­lished fact that a rea­der will be dis­trac­ted by the re­a­da­ble con­tent of a page when loo­king at its lay­out. The point of using Lo­rem Ip­sum is that it has a more-or-less nor­mal dis­tri­bu­ti­on of let­ters, as op­po­sed to using ‘Con­tent here, con­tent here’, ma­king it look like re­a­da­ble Eng­lish. Many desk­top pu­bli­shing packa­ges and web page edi­tors now use Lo­rem Ip­sum as their de­fault mo­del text, and a search for ‘lo­rem ip­sum’ will un­co­ver many web sites still in their in­fan­cy. Va­rious ver­si­ons have evol­ved over the ye­ars, so­me­ti­mes by ac­ci­dent, so­me­ti­mes on pur­po­se (in­jec­ted hu­mour and the like)

Lo­rem Ip­sum is sim­ply dum­my text of 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 gal­ley of type and scram­bled it to make a type spe­ci­men book.

Con­tra­ry to po­pu­lar be­lief, Lo­rem Ip­sum is not sim­ply ran­dom text. It has roots in a pie­ce of clas­si­cal La­tin li­te­ra­tu­re from 45 BC, ma­king it over 2000 ye­ars old. Ri­chard McClintock, a La­tin pro­fes­sor at Hamp­den-Syd­ney Col­lege in Vir­gi­nia, loo­ked up one of the more ob­scu­re La­tin words, con­sec­te­tur, from a Lo­rem Ip­sum pas­sa­ge, and go­ing th­rough the ci­tes of the word in clas­si­cal li­te­ra­tu­re, dis­co­ver­ed the un­doubta­ble source.

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Lo­rem Ip­sum co­mes from sec­tions 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Fi­ni­bus Bo­no­rum et Mal­orum” (The Ex­tre­mes of Good and Evil) by Ci­ce­ro, writ­ten in 45 BC. This book is a trea­tise on the theo­ry of ethics, very po­pu­lar du­ring the Re­nais­sance. The first line of Lo­rem Ip­sum, “Lo­rem ip­sum do­lor sit amet..”, co­mes from a line in sec­tion 1.10.32.

The­re are many va­ria­ti­ons of pas­sa­ges of Lo­rem Ip­sum available, but the ma­jo­ri­ty have suf­fe­r­ed al­tera­ti­on in some form, by in­jec­ted hu­mour, or ran­do­mi­sed words which don’t look even slight­ly be­lie­va­ble. If you are go­ing to use a pas­sa­ge of Lo­rem Ip­sum, you need to be sure the­re is­n’t any­thing em­bar­ras­sing hid­den in the midd­le of text. All the Lo­rem Ip­sum ge­ne­ra­tors on the In­ter­net tend to re­peat pre­de­fi­ned chunks as ne­ces­sa­ry, ma­king this the first true ge­ne­ra­tor on the In­ter­net. It uses a dic­tion­a­ry of over 200 La­tin words, com­bi­ned with a handful of mo­del sen­tence struc­tures, to ge­ne­ra­te Lo­rem Ip­sum which looks re­asonable. The ge­ne­ra­ted Lo­rem Ip­sum is the­r­e­fo­re al­ways free from re­pe­ti­ti­on, in­jec­ted hu­mour, or non-cha­rac­te­ristic words etc.