Talk:Lorem ipsum/Archive 1

Archive 1

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16th century? Maybe not. Here is the Straight Dope's take on it. (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010216.html)

"Just one problem. When I spoke to McClintock recently, he said he'd been unable to locate the old type sample in which he thought he'd seen lorem ipsum. The earliest he could definitely trace back the passage was Letraset press-type sheets, which dated back only a few decades. But come on, you think graphic arts supply houses were hiring classics scholars in the 1960s? Well, maybe they were. But it's easier to believe that someone at Letraset simply copied the text from an old hot-type source. We're now faced with the mere technical detail of figuring out which one."

---

the full text is in the wikisources...where's the link?

Does this article really need that huge block of source text? RickK 03:54, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It is the entire traditional text, to be sure. Now that http://ps.wikipedia.org is online, perhaps it should be moved there. I would keep it somewhere in case anyone needs a lorem ipsum text. -- Smerdis of Tlön 05:09, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

"pied"? -- The Anome 22:44, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Printer's pi is type that has been mixed together randomly. Not sure where it comes from, myself. -- Smerdis of Tlön 23:45, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

---

I found some of this text on a web page and tried to translate it. This is what I started with:

Duis autem vel eum Iriure dolor.
In hendrerit.
In vulputate.
velit esse molestie consequat, 
vel illum dolore. 
eu. 
feugiat nulla facilisis, at vero eros et Accumsan
et iusto odio Dignissim. Qui blandit praesent, luptatum Zzril delenit Augue.
duis dolore te Feugait nulla facilisi.

And this is what came out:

Twice but even him I am hew/chop into shaped by Iriur.
Into the hendrerit.
In the vulputat.
They may wish to be annoying consequat,
even that by the pain. 
Bravo. 
The no feugiat easy, but truly the masters and Accumsan
and to the justice to the hatred. 
Which/who Digniss flatters the surety, mitigates the wolf of Zzrilus by Augu.
Twice by the pain you no Feugait easy.

Mangled Latin poetry. No suprise. Auric The Rad 22:33, Dec 10, 2003 (UTC)

Homely Latin

Which/who Digniss flatters the surety, mitigates the wolf of Zzrilus by Augu.
Twice by the pain you no Feugait easy.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.196.211.217 (talk) 06:19, 21 June 2004‎

This short passage is used as filler material for web page designers, as well. An online search for Lorem Ipsum will turn up an incredible number of pages, if only in the page title tags. Using this snippet of Latin as filler is sometimes, confusingly, called Greeking. Greeking is often more often used to describe the replacement of tiny, unreadable fonts with grey boxes when you wish to view the overall layout of a document, instead of the actual text.

Which brings me full cicle, really, since the first application (that I know of) to do Greeking was Aldus PageMaker. Aldus's splash screen showed this Latin text in the background. A mangled version of this Latin text (which is from Cicero's de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum) is often used in publishing to test the form of a layout without being distracted by the content. Ironically, this process is called "greeking".

The version usually seen starts out "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet"... anything after that is pretty variable. Some even start out with "Lorum ipsum" instead.

The message in the original somehow reminds me of the movie Fight Club. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Reeve (talk • contribs) 16:36, 31 August 2004‎ (UTC)

Origins & rediscovery

Web sites are in general agreement that Richard McClintock, Latin professor and Director of Publications at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia (re)-discovered the source of the Lorem Ipsum text and found it to be "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" [1], though none of Google's top hits mentioned that he published his finding in Before and After in 1994 [2], so I asked him and received this quick response:

Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 17:54:48 -0400

To: User:Ke4roh

From: Richard McClintock

Subject: Re: Lorem ipsum date

Hi, Dr. McClintock,

I've looked the web over for information about your discovery of the source of "Lorem ipsum," though nobody seems to note WHEN you made the discovery. If it's not too much trouble, what year was it? I'd like to include the information in the Wikipedia article <http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Lorem_ipsum>.

Thanks,

Jim Scarborough

Dear Jim,

The letter about Lorem ipsum that started all the fuss was printed in Before & After, vol. 4 No. 1, in 1994. But I had looked up the passage a couple of years before that, for my own curiosity. Only when I saw them saying that it didn't mean anything did I take the trouble to tell the world.

Thanks for your interest.

Thank you.

Richard McClintock

Director of Publications

(434) 223-6395

P. O. Box 626

Hampden-Sydney College

Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943-0196

Here's the published note:

Lorem ipsum is Latin, slightly jumbled, the remnants of a passage from Cicero's de Finibus 1.10.32, which begins "Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." [There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain.]. [de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC, is a treatise on the theory of ethics very popular in the Renaisance.]

What I find remarkable is that this text has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since some printed in the 1500s took a galley of type and scambled it to make a type specemin book; it has survived not only four centuries of letter-by-letter resetting but even the leap into electronic typesetting, essentially unchanged except for an occational 'ing' or 'y' thrown in. It's ironic that when the then-understood Latin was scrambled, it became as incomprehensible as Greek; the phrase 'it's Greek to me' and 'greeking' have common semantic roots! — Richard McClintock. Before & After vol. 4, no. 1, 1994.

(I don't have time to change this right now, but the current assertion that adding lorem ipsum is the same as greeking the text is incorrect. Greeking is when the text is rendered as grey block below a certain point size in modern layout programs. -- [inspiral]) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inspiral (talk • contribs) 23:56, 30 August 2005‎ (UTC)

One doesn't call a grey field where text should appear "greeking" just because it's a grey block of text. That just seems too unlikely to me: what possible reason could there be to call that "greeking" if you can call it "placeholder" ? No, there must a good reason "greeking" is used.

I think it's more likely that "greeking" originally meant substituting some form of nonsense text, or unreadable characters perhaps. Note that your assertion that the term is used only in "modern" programs is incorrect. I found the term in a Windows SDK from ten years back, meaning something like "to replace with random squigglies or grey lines".

Just never base you're opinion on the meaning of a word on the usage in computing or computer programs. Meanings are very often subtly (or less subtly) changed or extended. Shinobu 06:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

In my 2001 research of "lorem ipsum" text and I was made aware of the origins by Rick Pali who posted the complete article from Design magazine, Before and After in alt.fonts.faqs. Missing from the previous excerpts in the introductory paragraph. It doesn't seem as though that the "findings were published" but rather the article was simply an editorial piece:

After telling everyone that Lorem ipsum, the nonsensical text that comes with PageMaker, only looks like Latin but actually says nothing, I heard from Richard McClintock, publication director at the Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, who had enlightening news:

Lorem ipsum is latin, slightly jumbled, the remnants of a passage from Cicero's 'de Finibus' 1.10.32, which begins 'Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit...' [There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain.]. [de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC, is a treatise on the theory of ethics very popular in the Renaisance.]

What I find remarkable is that this text has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since some printed in the 1500s took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book; it has survived not only four centuries of letter-by-letter resetting but even the leap into electronic typesetting, essentially unchanged except for an occasional 'ing' or 'y' thrown in. It's ironic that when the then-understood Latin was scrambled, it became as incomprehensible as Greek; the phrase 'it's Greek to me' and 'greeking' have common semantic roots!'' - Discography 18:01, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

"nothing at all"

Given that we now know where the original text came from and that it DOES mean something, despite the fact that is has been altered over time and includes some nonsense, why does the article still claim that it means "nothing at all"? --CloudSurfer 07:14, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

For current use of "lorem ipsum" it actually does mean nothing. It is not meant to have a meaning when used in design but rather has just the function of signifying content text and making a design seem 'complete'.--Discography 17:41, 21 Aug 2006 (UTC)

Note on the linguistic effect

I actually think that not only does it mean nothing at all, but because we want it to mean nothing as a placeholder, we actully make it mean nothing at all. If we had directly taken the words of Cicero, then we would be taking away from the beauty of the original piece.

68.98.187.239 12:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

SPAM vandal

Watch out, some IP-address keeps adding huge L-I blocks to this article and makes it unreadible! Thanx 69.142.2.68 18:53, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Apart from classical lipsum.com only value adding generators should be listed (choices of user setting, other languages/charsets, funny texts etc.) else the "external links" section will be constantly spammed. --Tickle me 00:23, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I removed most reinserted spam from lipsum.com. it's no WP:RS anyway, so it can't testify anything, besides it was added as second ref many times for no good reason. the links are gone now, but some added content needs yet more cleaning up. c-3po. 02 June 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.115.1.232 (talk) 01:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Re: Cultural Impact

Maybe I just don't know the right college students, but I haven't heard "lorem ipsum", (or any typesetting slang, for that matter) used as a term for inebriation. Urban Dictionary doesn't have it either. Can the contributor come back and identify the college in here? 128.208.1.57 00:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

You can find out by clicking the history button and making random checks on the entries. The contributor was 66.68.111.139, (seach history for: 23:26, 1 October 2005 66.68.111.139 (→Cultural Impact)). IPs are to be distrusted, above all when they don't cite sources. I'll delete it until proven factual. --tickle me 03:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

There seems to be some disagreement over whether The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog should be in the See Also section. As a note to those for removing it, I think the rationale is that it is similar in that both are used as sample text. My two cents worth is that it is a slight stretch to include it, but that it is relevant enough that it helps the article more than it can hurt (through potential confusion). — Saxifrage ✎ 19:58, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I also think All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy should be included there too, as another iconic example of filler text. Ewlyahoocom 14:34, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I would agree except that right now it's just a redirect to The Shining (film) and that article doesn't have any information about the phrase. — Saxifrage ✎ 00:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

It's a shame redirects don't support anchor tags, but there is this in section 1.4:

At the Overlook, Wendy grabs a baseball bat and goes searching for Jack down in the lounge. She walks to the typewriter, and sees the sheet in place. Written on it are endless repetitions of the single sentence "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." She looks through the stack of papers neatly placed to the side with increasing horror; the book Jack was working on consists of only the repetitions and permutations of layout of that same sentence.

Ewlyahoocom 01:06, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't have any treatment about the phrase as filler text though, so linking to it would just confuse the reader who doesn't already know about it. Ideally, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy would be turned into an article about the phrase and whatever contemporary adoption as filler text its had. Failing that, though, it shouldn't be linked because it wouldn't make any sense to the reader. — Saxifrage ✎ 01:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The text The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is not (or should not be) used as filler text... rather, the text has the benefit of displaying each single letter of the (English) latin alphabet. For designers it is possible to see the cut (style) of each single letter when set in a specific font. The relevancy here is that it is, just like lorem ipsum text, a tool however there is no other relation. — Discography 13:36, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Distribution of letters

The article says:

"Lorem ipsum" is also said to approximate a typical distribution of letters in English, which helps to shift the focus to presentation.

Unless this claim can be sourced, I suggest it should be cut as manifestly untrue. Latin has no w, y or z, and k is rare; the combinations th and sh in English mean many more ascenders. Because it is a highly inflected language, Latin sentences have fewer and longer words, which makes the distribution of spaces quite different. --Pfold 17:37, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I believe you might be misunderstanding the meaning of "distribution of letters". Until I read your comment, I had always assumed that it was referring to the lengths of the words, and the average occurance of double letters. By "distribution of letters", it means that an average English sentence will likely have words of approximately the same distribution of how many letters each word is... yes, that's a very convoluted way of explaining it, but that's because the only way to make it more concise would be to simply repeat what the article already says. Here's the letter-length of the words in the first sentence in Lorem ipsum, including punctuation: 5 5 5 3 4, 10 11 4, 3 2 6 6 9 2 6 2 6 5 6. Aside from the absense of single-letter words, this "letter distribution" is fairly similar to an average English sentence.

I hope I didn't over-explain myself (or come off as a snotty know-it-all), I just wanted to make sure I was clear on how I percieved the term. - Ugliness Man 14:33, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I too was somewhat confused by that phrase, although I also assumed that "distribution of letters" refered to the character distribution (ie the distribution of characters in relation to spaces and punctuation) rather than in the occurance of each letter in the alphabet distributed in the text. However Pfold's argument against it being a similar distribution of characters to spaces also seems to hold some merit. Using Ugliness' count of the lipsum text and counting the first 19 words of Ugliness' own post revealed similar numbers between the two with the lipsum being slightly higher (lipsum: 100 characters, 19 words, 5.26 char./word; Ugliness: 92 char., 19 words, 4.84 char/word). When using a larger sample set, however, the disparity between the two languages becomes more readily apparent: using the "complete" lipsum passage that the article links to yields an average of 6.81 char/word contrasted to the first 5 chapters of Genises (again Wikipedia's text, using the English translation of the Bible) which averaged only 4.10 char/word. That being said, lipsum still resembles English in terms of space usage and punctuation without giving the "reader" any semantic meanings (unless the reader diligently looks up where the lipsum phrase originated from). Indeed, the slight difference in characters per word (eg an increase of 1-3 char/word in lipsum for the sources I used) may reflect the relative ease between the documents; lipsum (using Flesch-Kincaid) had a grade level of 11, whereas the Bible text had a level of only 5.5. Thus a more astute sample text (perhaps a newpaper article, or an excerpt from Steven Hawking's "A Brief history of Time") may cause the average char/words to more approximate each other. Pyth007 13:58, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I also wanted to add that the originators of the lipsum text probably did think that the text was a good approximation of character distribution and didn't bother to factor in the nuances between the word formation of the two languages. Thus when the article says "'Lorem ipsum' is also said to approximate..." I think that it is true; the original intent of and statement of reasonings for the lipsum text are true, reguardless of how accurate it actually is linguistically. Similarly, wearing shorts in the winter is said to cause the common cold, but any biologist will tell you that it's not the weather but rather viruses that causes one to get sick.Pyth007 14:16, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Of course, there is a view that any supposed approximation to English is entirely irrelevant, and an post hoc justification. Until the 18th century much more was printed in Latin than in the native languages of Europe, and what is the evidence that it was first used by English typesetters? In any case, no typesetter would view a Latin text as an approximation to English - just look at any English/latin parallel text if you're not convinced by the linguistic arguments! McLintock's claim may be unsourced, but it seems entirely plausible, and no one has come up with anything better. I think the claim that it approximates to English either has to be sourced or deleted - unless we know "says" it's similar the satetment is of no value. --Pfold 18:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I was just going to write the same thing as the original poster, Pfold. The "average distribution of letters as in English" statement overstates its case—"lorem ipsum" is faux Latin text and as such is inherently different from an English text. For that reason it's generally not a good idea to use a text in a different language as placeholder. Maikel 19:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The claim about the distribution of letters is all over the web, but I couldn't find a source which looked reliable. I looked in google books, and found Sue Jenkins (2012). Web Design All-in-One For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-118-40413-3. That source says that it looks similar to English in its word size and distribution. Nik Mahon (2010). Basics Advertising 02: Art Direction. AVA Publishing. pp. 102. ISBN 978-2-940411-21-4. says that it looks similar to Englisn in its word size and distribution within sentences. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:29, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Originators of Lorem Ipsum

I think it's safe for me to say that the originators of 'lorem ipsum' and that small paragraph there would be (microsoft) frontpage.

This is the text the program would automatically generate for you in giving you template. The title of a paragraph usually read 'Lorem Ipsum'. This was one of the first programs - html related - that I used. Perhaps I am off. Evrenosogullari 05:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

If this is so, all this latin business is a large unneeded humbo jumbo of information that results from some programers at microsoft generating random text. I hope this is not so. Evrenosogullari 05:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

No, lorem ipsum has been around many, many years longer than Microsoft Corporation, let alone Frontpage. — Saxifrage ✎ 05:56, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

He just thinks this becuase it's the first place he saw it. Common mistake, it's human nature to assume the first place you saw it was the original. — SheeEttin {T/C} 16:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Aldus Pagemaker (which was later part of the Adobe family) allowed "lorem ipsum" text to be used as a filler. Letraset sheets also had lorem ipsum text. — Discography 17:33, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

You're way off, Evrenosogullari; thank goodness. I've been using Lorem ipsum since long before digital type. It can be found in type sample books distributed by the typographic foundries. Typography is a trade steeped in a sweet mixture of tradition and impish trickery. To imagine that the need for "dummy text" (which is the actual term for this, not "Greeking") did not arrive until the likes of Microsoft is laughable.

--213.208.238.35 (talk) 11:25, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Link to external loremipsum site

After reading the new comments regarding links to external lorem ipsum websites I propose the inclusion of the external link www.loremipsum.de

Why should this website be included?:
- www.loremipsum.de was the first ever dedicate website for lorem ipsum
- The content on loremipsum is either completly orginal or completly credited.
- Loremipsum.de does not contain "google advertising", requests for donations or other messages.

The website was launched in 2001 as a demonstration website used as a protype teaching students basic web design. The content was personally researched and credit has been given. Since this time it has become a popular site for designers seeking lorem ipsum text, either through the generator or as a downloadable text or word document.

Since 2001 other loremipsum websites have been also launched, some shamelessly copying orginal content (without permission or crediting the source). As a result loremipsum.de is now "copyleft", free to copy however credit is appreciated. — Discography 12:00, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about it being the first as 2001 is awfully young as far as the Web is concerned, but apart from that it does look like a very well–put together page. It seems to contain all the information that lipsum.com does without ads and with a nicer layout. I would support adding this link to the page. I'm going to offer the further suggestion for consideration that we also remove the lipsum.com link because we only need one link to a generator. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Waybackmachine archive of loremipsum.de — lipsum.com came out later and was a single page whereas loremipsum.de contained historical info, downloads etc... — Discography 11:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

We've made a cool new lorem ipsum generator with a really simple layout and some handy buttons for making paragraphs shorter and longer. It's not a commercial venture, our design team coded it from scratch using AJAX because we couldn't get what we wanted from the other ones out there. You can have a look at http://www.e-cbd.com/lorem-ipsum-generator.htm — I realise there's an argument for only having one generator, but I think you could also argue that Wikipedia users would be better served by having links to a few different generators with added features — there's certainly room for more without it becoming a free-for-all. I won't add our link in, but I'll leave it up to the consensus of the discussion here if anyone thinks our generator is worthy. There's a link from the page to Wikipedia as well, not that it counts for anything, but I thought I'd at least mention that we're Wikipedia supporters as well. Cheers E-CBD 02:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)E-CBD

As a note, Wikipedia isn't really in the business of providing users with a directory of resources, so a that particular argument for inclusion doesn't carry much persuasive weight here. Google and DMOZ are much better at providing resources, and we're not aiming to replace them.

(Quite aside, the generator doesn't seem to work in Firefox on MacOS X: the text box is blank and pushing the buttons doesn't do anything.) — Saxifrage ✎ 19:03, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess I joined this discussion a bit late, but lipsum.com has the advantage that it doesn't need JavaScript to work, while www.loremipsum.de does. Bi 12:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I can understand that you don't want to have too many links in the list. In spite of this I would like to add http://bentkamp.de/blindzebra/en/ because this site supports many languages. (Lipsum.com doesn't.) I refer to what Tickle me said in his discussion Talk:Lorem_ipsum#SPAM_vandal: he wanted to support "other languages/charsets"! --87.122.1.237 (talk) 18:08, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

new thread

@85.140.95.189 - re this

"you spammed lorem-ipsum.info / You should try another Google-Ad-Site"

ip, please assume good faith - Lorem Ipsum happens to be on my watchlist. If you feel wronged, you may register and ask for assistance.

"Added back lipsum.com as it includes banners"

Banners are not encyclopaedical. There's nothing wrong if sites have them, but this doesn't make them valuable to WP at all.

"and packages which aren't available on the other link"

WP doesn't care much about item lists, that's for DMOZ - besides, there are many sites that link code generators, that's not specific to lorem ipsum. Again, nothing wrong, but that doesn't make a site important for WP.

lipsum.com offers plain filler text, nothing wrong about that, but the other site offers additionally filler text in about a dozen languages *and* corresponding charsets. So far I couldn't find alternatives for difficult charsets like Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi or Arabic, seems difficult to program. The only other difference between the contended sites is age: lipsum.com has been around since 2001, lorem-ipsum.info since 2004 - hardly an argument. I see that you have been warned. I don't know if that is fair, but please check this with admins first, before engaging in fights. --Texterone (talk) 09:37, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

ip, "Graphic Banners" don't cut it, and there's a policy both for editing (cf the hidden comment) and for disputes. You can't argue by repetition. --Texterone (talk) 11:28, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

i deleted the last remaining generator - so the situation is clear. in my opinion a small list of generators generates additional benefit and the people should have the possibility to choose among them the one they like the most. the only minimal requirement should be, not to accept ip-postings ... --Kazie-en (talk) 06:24, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Jasper Fforde

I just thought I'd point out that Lorem Ipsum is spoken as a language of one of the characters in Jasper Fforde's (http://www.jasperfforde.com/) series of "Thursday Next" novels.

I don't know if that should be mentioned on this page or not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.134.49.13 (talk) 07:52, 27 August 2006

Sourcing

I've seen the source 'Before and After Magazine, volume 4, number 2' mentioned in at least 2 other relevant webpages, so if someone can get hold of it somehow we may be able to use it as a source for this article. --ais523 15:05, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The content of the article has been printed in this discussion (under Origins & rediscovery) and I have had contact with Rick Pali who was the first person to refer (ie digital reprint) to the article by Richard McClintock in "Before and After" online in the newsgroup alt.fonts faqs. The article (or better called an editorial) is above and based on the information above (ie. dialogue with Richard McClintock) and general consensus about the origins, the article can be safely referenced. Discography 20:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Lipsum

In the article new changes state lorem ipsum (or simply lipsum)... and following is continued reference to lipsum. This is new and I believe incorrect as Lorem Ipsum is not referred to as "lipsum" but rather by more common terms such as blind text / filler text / mock text / dummy text / greeked text / placeholder text. Although Lipsum happens to be the name of a website with lorem ipsum info, it is an obscure term and distorts the real information in the article. Discography 20:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

nostrum/nostrud

In the "most common" text there is the pseudo-word "nostrud", while in the original "nostrum" is completely highlighted. I think [nostru]m should be highlighted that way, without the m, because the m is not in the lipsum.

Ali H. 21:26, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Dub-dub-dub-dub-dub ... Illusion!

If the general idea of "lorem ipsum" is for it to be a text that doesn't distract from design aspects such as layout, fonts, etc., then it really fails miserably on my part: everytime I come across it I subconsciously try to translate it and consequently get massively distracted because I can't make heads nor tails out of it. In fact it distracts me as probably few other texts could. Next, it's practically impossible to memorize; by contrast, when I need a filler text to check out a font or to test a keyboard, I use something from memory such as a poem, a bit of Shakespeare or a national anthem. Finally, it's not even a pangram, so you can't use it to check out a font. And most of all: where's the difficulty in creating filler text in the first place? Just hack at the keyboard a bit and make sure that you hit the space key once in a while: lakjd alkdjf qer alkjdf ycvoa rao qer aglruow, etc. Or show some creativity and hack out something along the lines of "This is only some placeholder text to test my cool new layout, there is nothing to read here folks, please stop reading now" etc. Hey presto. Maikel 15:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Latin and Greek

I was under the illusion that 'greeking' was reducing the letters into unintellegent squiggles, such as to show the presence of text, without any real text there.

The purpose of 'latin' is where the text is large enough to read, but was not intended to read. So basically, a paragraph containing the same sort of ascenders and decenders in the target language, serves the same visual effect. For people who actually can read latin, this serves as a distraction. --Wendy.krieger 10:48, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I spend more time trying to find out if it's Ecclesiastical Latin (Greek (language) influence) or Classical Latin. Rekutyn (talk) 03:11, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

If effectively this text comes out from Cicero's poetry, it cannot be ecclesiastical Latin, because Rome was still an Empire not inspired by christianism, as this religion was still not born and had not spread across the Roman empire. It could however have been influenced by Greek, as a way to make it distinct and more "prestigious" from the vernacular "vulgar" Latin used in the low people of Rome: the references to old Greek poetry was famous at that time, and was unrelated to Christianism but effectively highly related to the Paganism (that was the Roman way of adding value to its gods, by reference to the older Greek gods with which they were associated, in contrast to other Gods of Celtic origins that were also used by the various peoples living in most of Northern Italia before they were conquired by Romans, i.e. the so-called "Old Italic" languages.)

It should be noted also that the Greek language was initialy MUCH more present in a large area of Southern Italy, when Latin was still a very minor dialect only spoken around Rome. The influence of Greek in the newer imperial Latin language has been decisive to uniformize it, as soon as Rome's influence covered most of Italy and the number of exchanges and movements of populations created a mix of languages, in which the number of speakers from Southern Italia was dominating those from other Northern Italia regions with one of the many Italic dialects. The Latin language had then a lot of local dialects and was really not uniform enough, except in the much wider region with native Greek culture. It's not surprizing, then, that the vernacular language with Greek influence was more regulated and better understood and masterized, allowing the development of poetry, something that was probably too much difficult to inspire with the "pure" (but very minoritar) Latin language spoken in Rome that had become a minority dialect in the Empire, but now perceived as a vulgar language that could not be used by the Emperors to control the Empire.

For this reason, I would classify this as Classical Latin, even if this text was still not uniformized, and could be be understood by the native people in Rome, as it contained toop much inclusions of the Greek influence from Southern Italia. If you look closer in history, you will see that even the various people living in Rome could not understand themselves correctly, and for native Romans and the various other minority peoples from the Northern Italic regions that had adopted the local Roman dialect without making much reference to their old Italic dialects, they would refer to those speaking one of the languages of Southern Italy as "speaking Greek" despite the fact that they were in fact speaking now a sort of creole of mixed Roman Latin+Greek. Those peoples were still designated as "Greek" and this applied as well to their language, the same used in poetry. The expression "It's Greek to me" can certainly be explained in this context, and the "Lorem Ipsum" text shares all the aspects from the initial attempts to create a uniformize Latin language for the Empire, a language that was difficult to apply to the people before it was supported by the most influent political authorities like the Emperor. The role of Cicero would have then been decisive: he was both a poet and an Emperor, and his name became bery prestigious. Most of Cicero's original writings have been lost and largely modified during the development of Classical Latin and its evolution during the Roman Republic before the Chritian era (and this is true for all the early Latin poetry, that used one of the various forms of the Latin+Greek creole).

Now there are two aspects in the expression "it's Greek to me". First it means that it makes no sense for the reader of the text, but it does not mean that it has no sense at all, just that it is hard to understand and that the reader won't attempt to make any effort to decipher it. It can then have a negative aspect under this context. The second aspect is that it gives to the text some "prestige" by inserting an illusory relation to the famous Classical Greek language and its very reknowned poets whose influence was so important that they were known thoughout the Mediterranean borders, from Northern Africa (notably Egypt) to Asia (everything North and East of Greece, not just Anatolia) and Middle-East in Persia up to Northern India (the inital sphere of influence of Phoenicians and Spartians). Most of this area would become later the sphere of influence of the Roman Empire when it also invaded Greece.

It is difficult to trace back the true language used in Classical Latin, because the original texts have been modified a numerous of times with the evolution and expansion of the Latin language in the Roman Empire. but the Roman influence became more easily accepted when it refered to Classical Greek. The fact that the Cicero's text seems "mangled" today is just ignoring the evolution of the Latin language during the centuries of its expansion. If you look at it using the Classical Latin rules you learned at schoold and that was largely influenced by Church after the 4th century AD, you are missing the point: the text is most probably not "mangled" but nearer from the original, or it may have been reconstructed long after its initial creation, based only on Classical poetic phonology adapted to vernacular Latin by reintroducing Classical Greek in the structure of the text. This text is highly remarkable that it does not need to make sense, if it is poetry; it just has to adopt a Latin look and respect some poetic measures phonology, rythm, rimes, and so on...). If you look at it as a reconstruction, it is not much different from what you are doing when trying to generate and use a text with similar aspects, that should look like true language, but does not need to make sense.

When publishers in the Renaissance started to produce sample books to exhibit their typography, and make it look prestigious, they may have completely forgotten the ghistory of the text, when they used this old sample with mixed linguistic origin. At that time Latin was mostly reserved for Christian purpose, and if one had used actual Latin language, such books could have been easily seen as influenced by Church (so these sample books could have been perceived as diffamatory against the Christian religion, in a period that was highly troubled between Catholics and Protestants, who were also disputing about the original text of the Bible: Modern Church Latin, Greek, Hebrew?) The choice of an old vernacular language, also not related directly to the then banned roman paganism would have been better perceived by both Catholics and Protestants, notably because it was also a mix of the languages referenced by the Catholics and Protestants. I even suspect that some terms in this Lorem Ipsum text appears "mangled" just because it also includes some inclusion of Hebrew origin, in addition to other Asian, Phoenician, Coptic, and Phoenician origins, i.e. the various influences that inspired the early poet that wrote this text before becoming Emperor and the unificator of the various regions in the same sphere of influence as modern Christianism. The purpose of publishers when using such text was probably to avoid the severe political split between the branches of Christianism and they just chose a form of text related to a time were the Roman Empire was quite stable (in its borders), respected and still growing (and not in chaos like in the 16th century after the collapse of the empire and in the remaining endangered Byzantine empire).

Now who cares abuot what this text means? The existing "Lorem Ipsum" is just a form of text that was just used by publishers in the purpose of appearing acceptable for a large number of readers, exactly because its meaning was not essential, but its form was perceived as being "correct" to represent any modern language based on Classical or vernacular Latin or Greek or other Indo-European languages (including Celtic, Germanic and Nordic languages that wre also highly influenced by Latin from the old Western or Eastern Roman empires). It should also be remembered that producing books containing high quality typography was also very expensive, and would have been the sampled content be politically or religiously sensitive, the book would have risked the seizure and destruction. It seemed then essential to preserve the hard work of the typographers against this risk: owning such book should not impact the designer of this book, or its owner as well. Typographs wanted to get work from anyone (and such text can be perceived as an early and more universally acceptable form of advertizing for promoting their work).

Anyway, this text has not appeared magically and was not popularized by Adobe in its softwares, because such popularization had a long history of several centuries of use by typographs. The text was most probably adopted by Adobe jut because it also avoided some legal caveats with copyright or author's right, if they had chosen another text as a significative sample of text to demonstrate the effect of some font with actual text. It's true that other examples like "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy fox" could have been used, but it is only acceptable by English readers, and it is much too short to allow the insertion within paragraphs and columns. Such short text can only be used to show the individual letters, but is not convenient for actually showing the aspect of the font within actually rendered texts, or to appreciate its legibility, blackness, style, and large-scale reproducibility.

The Lorem Ipsum text no the opposite is perfect because it is long enough to avoid creating undesirable visible patterns if rendered in columns like in newspapers, diaries, or dictionnaries: try it by yourself: a text too short will create regularly patterned "spots" because of the whitespaces and letters with descenders or ascenders. One bad thing is that this Latin text does not include any accent or diacritics, so it can't be used to test their effect in rendering texts written in languages that can't be easily read without them. That's why there also exists modified forms of the Lorem Ipsum text, that has been augmented with the diacritics used in Classical Latin or Polytonic Greek phonology (notably macrons, breves, diaeresis and grave/acute/circumflex accents). Some publishers have used actual texts written in Polytonic Greek but with a Roman style, or its Latin transliteration, exactly for this purpose, instead of Lorem Ipsum, but others have used famous non-versed texts from Rabelais, Goeth, and so on (after these texts had moved to the public domain) as more significant samples for rendering French, German, Spanish, Italian... In fact, today, Lorem Ipsum is just used to create samples for English only (because it lacks the accents whose usage is now quite rare in modern English).

another bad thing about Lorem Ipsum is the fact that its sentences are too short and use too many punctuation signs, much more frequently than in actual English. That's why typographs prefer now to test their fonts using actual non-versed texts from Shakespeare and other famous English authors. verdy_p (talk) 14:34, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't be ignorant, at the time of Cicero rome was still a Republic and absolutely not an Empire 94.161.246.195 (talk) 18:00, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

New Generator

An intuitive fast and beautiful generator with multiple language and charset support (UTF-8) is [3] it generates text, images and pdf too.

Only as a recommendation: www.blindtextgenerator.com (comfortable and nice texts) - maybe one of the main editors wants to place it ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kazie-en (talk • contribs) 16:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

what about adding this:

• Lorem Ipsum generator in many languages and charsets

Greek, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.72.15.26 (talk) 05:19, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Why is there not a spamipsum.com site. Variations of english breakfast with various amounts of spam replacements would be a nice variation. A simple site to generate a menu of english breakfast and for each point further down the menu more and more ingredients are replaced with spam, visitors to select the length of the menu, or if spam replaces from left or right or replaces only meat and leaves vegetables and toast. And perhaps a variation where spam is replaced with the word pain (instead of serving hot nails obviously). 212.93.39.28 (talk) 08:46, 9 August 2012 (UTC)mb

Stuff wrong with Introduction

The introduction of this page looks more like an Uncyclopedia page than a Wikipedia page... I think it needs a total replacement.Stevv (talk) 01:13, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Inserted humour

"If one is going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, it is proper to be sure there is not anything "hidden" in the middle of text."

Are there examples?

Dog Latin mentions Lorem ipsum: there should be a reverse reference. Jackiespeel (talk) 16:32, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

History of use

I see that we still don't have any good sources for when Lorem ipsum started to be used as filler text. In fact, the current article gives no information at all about this, only talking about when it "acquired its current standard form" -- and that with no sources. Strangely, in Google Books, Scholar, and News, the earliest example I could find was in 1972! [4]

I was amused to see that in the Rackham edition (1914) of Cicero's De finibus, the phrase starts at the top of the page, which is suggestive, but proof of nothing of course.... --Macrakis (talk) 01:14, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I have a feeling that the use would be unusual in the pre-mechanised era of typesetting. It might be used in printed references on fonts, but, otherwise, why set a page of, effectively, nonsense text. Hot metal typesetting is where it looks practical to start making sample pieces. The first time I saw it, outside what might be called a typesetting context, was in some of the illustration for the RPG, "Mercenaries, Spies, And Private Eyes." That's apparently 1983, and couple of years before Pagemaker. Zhochaka (talk) 14:45, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

New Lipsum Generator Link

Is it possible to add a link to lipsum.com? It is a very popular generator and has the top search result on google for "lorem ipsum". --Fpmfpm (talk) 20:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Did you read the rest of the talk page? There was much discussion to remove that site in favor of others, due to ad placement and copied content taken from other sources without referencing. There are other generators linked at the bottom of the oage. 149.15.75.1 (talk) 20:59, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Are references to any of these lorem ipsum generators encyclopedic? I don't think so. Remember, WP is not a Web directory. --Macrakis (talk) 01:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Catiline (Cicero) quote

That was frequently used for type samples before the 20th century; one reason was that it allowed the often ornate capital "Q" to be shown off... AnonMoos (talk) 17:47, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

See the italic font of File:Caslon-schriftmusterblatt.jpeg, for example. AnonMoos (talk) 16:20, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Someone Accidentally...

.. the whole Extracted Example section. Tags need proper formatting. Anonymousposter9000 (talk) 19:34, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Lorem ipsum

The first line of the article includes a [p] reference to a pronunciation comment, which, in turn, has a "citation needed tag". Yes, it certainly does need a citation. The pronunciation provided is not one that I have ever heard, and it conflicts with the more detailed information in Wiktionary. It would be best, I think, to remove this "reference". (I would have already done so, but was not certain of the best way to accomplish this.) Tim Ross (talk) 12:34, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

LittleIpsum

Hi, I was hoping LittleIpsum could be added to this page as an external link for a couple reasons.

1. It's OS X software, not an online generator
2. It doesn't require the internet to be used, unlike the generators listed on this page.

http://littleipsum.com/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.209.190.5 (talk) 19:33, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

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