About Lorem Ipsum | Cicero, Typesetters and Placeholder Text

A passage by Cicero from 45 BC

Lorem ipsum comes from De finibus bonorum et malorum, On the Ends of Good and Evil, a work on ethics that the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote in 45 BC. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 contain the line Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, roughly: nor is there anyone who loves pain itself because it is pain. The Latin scholar Richard McClintock is credited with tracing the placeholder text back to this passage.

Why it starts with lorem

Lorem is not a Latin word. It is the end of dolorem, pain, cut off as if a line started in the middle of a word. The text was further scrambled by dropping and adding words and letters, so it keeps the rhythm and word lengths of real Latin but can no longer be read. That is exactly the point: the eye sees text, not meaning.

From typesetters to Letraset and PageMaker

It is often said that a printer scrambled the text in the 1500s for a type specimen book, but there is no firm proof of that. What is documented is that lorem ipsum became widespread in the 1960s on Letraset dry transfer sheets that designers rubbed onto their layouts. In the 1980s desktop publishing software such as Aldus PageMaker shipped with it, and from there it spread to word processors, templates and the web.

Using placeholder text well

Placeholder text, also called greeking or dummy text, helps you judge typography, spacing and layout before the real content is ready. Switch to real content as early as possible, because real headlines and paragraphs are often longer or shorter than expected. Search for lorem ipsum before you publish: forgotten placeholder text on live websites is surprisingly common.

Frequently asked questions

Is lorem ipsum real Latin?

Partly. The words come from real Latin by Cicero, but they are cut, shuffled and mixed with made up words such as lorem, so the text as a whole has no meaning.

Why not just use real text?

Readable text draws attention to the words. Neutral filler lets people judge the design, and Latin looks like normal text in most western languages without being readable.

What does the Cicero original say?

It is about pleasure and pain: no one rejects pleasure because it is pleasure, but because great pains follow for those who don't know how to pursue it sensibly. Choose Cicero original in the generator to see the Latin passage.