Lorem ipsum
The faux-Latin text Lorem ipsum (lipsum for short) is often found in demonstrations of fonts and other places where typography and layout are on display. It often arouses curiosity as to what it means.
The simple answer is: nothing at all. It is well known that people are distracted by readable text, so when displaying a typeface, publishers use lipsum to make people focus on the typeface and not on the content. Additionally, lipsum has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters as is seen in English. This also helps to get people to not concentrate on the content.
The standard lorem-ipsum text, dating from the 1500s, is as follows:
- 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.
The text is actually copied from Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum, "On the ends of the good and the evil." The original passage began: Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit ("Nobody likes pain for its own sake, or looks for it and wants to have it, just because it is pain...")
Many variations on the standard lipsum text exist, some with very little resemblance to the original. Some versions of the text have additional letters which were uncommon or lacking in Latin — such as k, w, and z — and nonsense words such as zzril, takimata, and gubergren added to the original passage to achieve a proper distribution of letters.
See also: List of Latin phrases
External links
- Traditional Lorem ipsum text on Wikisource (http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum)
- Lorem ipsum generator (http://lorem-ipsum.perbang.dk/) (many user settings)
- Lipsum.com (http://lipsum.com/) (general information and Lorem ipsum generator)
- Generator for typographical filler text (http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/generator2) (Ipsum and other languages/charsets)
- de finibus bonorum — full text (http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/html/de-finibus)
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