How can you simulate text without real meaning? Many media professionals first turn to “Lorem ipsum”. But where to get this dummy text and which alternatives exist?

Lorem ipsum – These words tell the brain to focus all attention on the visual design and safely ignore the content. The purpose of lorem ipsum is to create a natural looking, though nonsensical, text that doesn’t distract from the layout. It is a placeholder, filler or dummy text used in the printing and typesetting industry that looks like readable text. With an even distribution of letters, Lorem ipsum is used to demonstrate what the layout of a document will look like without meaningful content. And this is for a reason.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

It is a long established fact

that readers are easily distracted by readable content when looking at the layout of a print, graphic or web design. The purpose of dummy text is to give an impression of what a finished print layout or web design will look like before the document is published. Lorem ipsum allows graphic designers, publishers and others to focus on getting the graphical elements right without being distracted by content. Another advantage of dummy text is that it takes the pressure off creative professionals to create text that makes sense.

• Instead they can concentrate on optimising the layout of a website or other document. A word of caution: Sometimes dummy text doesn’t get replaced and is accidentally published.
• But with lorem ipsum you are often on the safe side since many prepress software applications scan text to be published for standard dummy text.
• Using real content would distract readers too much from the visual layout. We can’t help but take in the content which distracts us from the actual task of assessing the visual elements.
• For presentations and projects, lorem ipsum assures that no sensitive data is displayed on the screen or overhead projector.

LOREM IPSUM, PURPOSEFULLY DESIGNED TO HAVE NO MEANING

Where does lorem ipsum come from?

Upon glancing at the placeholder text, you might say: “Well, of course, it’s Latin.” But although the phrase appears to be an intelligent Latin idiom, it is impossible to translate, at least in a meaningful way. Real Latin words are intermingled with jabberwocky that feigns to be of Roman origin.

The nonsensical phrase is based on a passage from Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, a treatise on the theory of ethics written in 45 B.C. Parts of this philosophical essay of the famous Roman thinker “On the Ends of Good and Evil” form the basis of this jumbled dummy text.

The beginning of the original text reads like this: “Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit“. This will make the Latin scholars among our readers breathe a sigh of relief – this is real Latin. Over time, words were added, modified or removed to make it nonsensical. Lorem ipsum is believed to have been used as scrambled placeholder text since the 15th century. At least, this is what Richard McClintock, a Latin professor, thinks.

In the 1960s, lorem ipsum was popularised with the release of Letraset sheets. Letraset was a US company that manufactured lettering sheets, among others, which were also used by professional graphic designers. Lorem ipsum dummy text featured on Letraset lettering sheets for decades. So as the digital revolution conquered the world of graphic design, it was only logical for lorem ipsum to make its way from typesetters to the first DTP programs where it was incorporated as filler text and is standard today.

THIS IS A TYPO DUMMY TEXT. IT SHOWS WHETHER ALL LETTERS ARE WHERE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE AND HOW THEY LOOK.

It doesn’t have to be lorem ipsum though.

Although the pseudo-Latin placeholder text is widely used around the world, it is not always the best choice. It’s okay to use lorem ipsum, for example, to add new pages to a magazine without making major layout changes.

But to present a brand-new design to customers, for example, it might be better to include content similar to the one you intend to use with a similar length and tone of voice in order to get a more realistic impression of what the final result will look like. A jumbled version of nonsensical Latin might not be the most representative mock-up here. In some cases, it is even advisable to work with real content.

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG.

• Pangrams: A pangram is a sentence or verse that contains all the letters of the alphabet. The main usage of pangrams is that you can see what all letters of a font look like. Repeated as an endless loop, they are often used as dummy text, too.
  • • “The five boxing wizards jump quickly” is an example of a pangram. Another version is: “When zombies arrive, quickly fax judge Pat.”
    • The most famous pangram is of course the good old: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
    • Pangrams exist in most languages. A French pangram is, for example: “Portez ce whisky au vieux juge blond qui fume.” In Spain, you usually need two sentences to represent all letters and special characters: “Benjamín pidió una bebida de kiwi y fresa. Noé, sin vergüenza, la más exquisita champaña del menú.”

 

When zombies arrive, quickly fax judge Pat.

• Fun texts: If you are humorous person, you can copy nonsense texts or use a dummy text generator that provides fun versions and fancy lorem ipsum variants.
• Real content: In some cases, it can be advisable to use real content instead of dummy text to get a visual impression of the font appearance, the distribution of word lengths or entire text passages.

How to get dummy text?

If you don’t have a dummy text generator, you have various possibilities: You can copy a filler text of your choice and copy it as needed. The internet provides a wealth of templates or you can use our PDF:

Dummy text generators on the internet

The world wide web not only provides copying templates but also applications to generate dummy text. We have tested a representative selection for you:

Λορεμ ιπσθμ δολορ σιτ αμετ, προ νο σιντ αδιπισcινγ ιντελλεγαμ, φθγιτ οφφενδιτ vιμ ιν.

Lorem ipsum generators

The classic lorem ipsum and a few new combinations are found all over the internet and are hard to miss. Below, we will present a few of them.

• http://www.loremipsum.de: This website provides various versions of lorem ipsum for download, including a German and English translation.
• https://www.websiteplanet.com/webtools/lorem-ipsum/: Lorem ipsum in its purest form, optionally as Rich Text or HTML.
• https://www.atwillys.de/tools/loremipsum: This website is characterised by its uncompromising minimalism: Enter the “Number of words” and click “Go”.
• http://generator.lorem-ipsum.info: This is the most versatile lorem ipsum generator we tested. You can add snippets of words from other languages to the Latin-sounding text passages, including Danish/Norwegian, Icelandic, Vietnamese and Czech in Latin script. But the site offers other character sets as well, such as Cyrillic, Greek (see above), Armenian and Hindi.

If Trump Ipsum weren’t my own words, perhaps I’d be dating it.

Hilarious lorem ipsum generators:

If you work with placeholder text a lot, you may be fed up with the much overused standard lorem ipsum. You just can see it anymore after so many years. So a well-made parody version of the dummy text is highly welcome, albeit not for every business occasion. Below you will find a small selection of lorem ipsums that are fun and will surely lighten up the mood:

• https://www.bobrosslipsum.com: This dummy text generator is for all those who want to put a little love in their designs inspired by Bob Ross quotes from the Joy of Painting television series: “Remember how free clouds are. They just lay around in the sky all day long ….”
• https://slipsum.com: If you are not a fan of “happy little trees”, Slipsum, might be more up your alley. It is a collection of quotes from Samuel L. Jackson movie characters. The “Clear that shit” button says it all.

• https://trumpipsum.net: “Make Placeholder Text Great Again.” This hilarious take on lorem ipsum is made of text taken form actual Donald Trump quotes (see quote above).
• There are two fun lore ipsum versions from two opposite ends of the culinary spectrum: https://baconipsum.com for all those looking for a meatier placeholder copy and http://veggieipsum.com if you prefer a healthier diet. Users with a sweet tooth will relish http://www.cupcakeipsum.com and cheese addicts will love to create their perfect dummy text at http://www.cheeseipsum.co.uk. Or try http://liquoripsum.com if you prefer something a little stiffer.

A WONDERFUL SERENITY HAS TAKEN POSSESSION OF MY ENTIRE SOUL; LIKE THESE SWEET MORNINGS OF SPRING WHICH I ENJOY WITH MY WHOLE HEART.

Lorem ipsum alternatives

• https://www.blindtextgenerator.com: This website provides a variety of lorem ipsum themes: In addition to the standard lorem ipsum and an English translation of the original Cicero text, the site features text on European languages, excerpts from Goethe’s Werther (see quote above), something from Kafka and pangrams repeated in series. Hilarious: Giovanni Trapattoni’s legendary 1998 outburst in German.
  The tool is easy to handle: Just enter the required number of words, characters and paragraphs – and voilà – your dummy text is ready to be cut and pasted.
• http://randomtextgenerator.com: This dummy text generator provides 16 languages, including standard languages and unusual languages, such as Finnish and Japanese. To judge from the languages we know, we can say that the generated text passages work well as placeholder text as they include plenty of real words mixed with a few nonsensical or incorrectly spelled words.
• http://obamaipsum.com: Another presidential lorem ipsum, this dummy text generator features oratories which Barack Obama actually held. Just enter the number of paragraphs and click the “Yes We Can” button.
• https://dack.com/web/bullshit.html: The Web Economy Bullshit Generator produces empty phrases and clichés, such as “leverage best-of-breed infrastructures”, which might even make sense to those regularly exposed to dull PowerPoint presentations.
• http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/text: This dummy text generator delivers up to five paragraphs of English text which makes sense in itself.

When not to use dummy text

In recurring publications, such as magazines in a standard layout, the sole purpose of dummy text is to be immediately recognised as such. Otherwise, it may happen that embarrassing text passages stay hidden in the middle of text and get published. A standard lorem ipsum is better in these cases as it is easily recognised and triggers an alarm when overlooked.

For contract work, such as ads and corporate flyers, lorem ipsum or other standard dummy texts are not helpful and can even be detrimental in the worst case. Pseudo-Latin or English jabber without meaning does not communicate a realistic impression of the final product. The end result can look completely different from the presented mock-up and leave customers feeling dissatisfied.

But incorporating meaningful text may not be enough in some cases. Layouts in which text is given very little space should be filled with real content as quickly as possible. And you should never underestimate the lack of graphic and textual imagination of some decision makers.