The Fascinating 500-Year History of Lorem Ipsum Dummy Text
Why do designers use scrambled 1st-century Latin text in modern wireframes? The history of Lorem Ipsum explained.
The Ultimate Distraction
When designing a website layout or a magazine spread, showing a client a mockup filled with 'Content goes here' or readable English is dangerous. Clients inevitably start reading and critiquing the placeholder copy instead of focusing on the typography, spacing, and visual hierarchy.
Enter Lorem Ipsum
Lorem Ipsum is a piece of pseudo-Latin dummy text. It looks like readable text because it has a normal distribution of letters and word lengths, but it is completely nonsensical. This forces the viewer's eye to focus strictly on the design.
Where Did It Come From?
Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not random gibberish. It traces its roots back to a piece of classical Latin literature written by Cicero in 45 BC, titled 'De finibus bonorum et malorum' (The Extremes of Good and Evil).
In the 1500s, an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled Cicero's text to make a type specimen book. It survived 500 years of print history and successfully leaped into the digital age as the standard placeholder text for UI/UX designers.
Need to fill out a wireframe? Use our [Lorem Ipsum Generator](/tools/lorem-ipsum-generator) to instantly generate paragraphs, lists, and HTML-ready dummy text.
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