Lorem ipsum ( ) is a dummy or placeholder text commonly used in graphic design, publishing, and web development. It is typically a corrupted version of , a 1st-century BC text by the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, with words altered, added, and removed to make it nonsensical and improper Latin. The first two words are the truncation of ("pain itself"). Lorem ipsums purpose is to permit a page layout to be designed, independently of the copy that will subsequently populate it, or to demonstrate various fonts of a typeface without meaningful text that could be distracting.
Versions of the Lorem ipsum text have been used in typesetting since the late 1960s, when Letraset transfer sheets containing the placeholder text popularized it. Popular word processors, including Pages and Microsoft Word, have since adopted Lorem ipsum, as have many LaTeX packages, web content managers such as Joomla! and WordPress, and CSS libraries such as Semantic UI.
Example text A common form of Lorem ipsum reads:
Meaning Despite originating in De finibus, the text has undergone slight changes, notably the cutting off of the do‑ in dolorem and replacing of the suffix in adipiscing and more. As a result of this, the text has no significant meaning in Latin.
Origins The Lorem ipsum text is derived from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero's . The physical source may have been the 1914 Loeb Classical Library edition of , where the Latin text, presented on the left-hand (even) pages, breaks off on page 34 with "" and continues on page 36 with "." The Lorem ipsum text continues with excerpts that appear to generally match the layouts of pages 56, 70, and 118, suggesting that the layout of the Loeb book was the source of the dummy text seen today.
The first published explanation of the text's origin is attributed to Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar at Hampden–Sydney College. McClintock connected Lorem ipsum to Cicero's writing sometime before 1982 by searching for recorded uses of the Latin word , which was rarely used in classical literature. McClintock first published his discovery in a 1994 letter to John McWade, the editor of the Before & After magazine,Before & After 4:2, according to contesting McWade's earlier claim that Lorem ipsum had no meaning. That letter claimed that the placeholder text had been used since the 1500s, but McClintock admitted in a 2026 interview that that date had been a guess with no evidence to back it up.
The version in use today is derived from Letraset transfer sheets first published in 1966. According to Letraset designer Dave Farey, the text was supplied by British librarian James Mosley as an alternative to the Quousque tandem abutere text from elsewhere in Cicero's writings that had been used in typography manuals since the 1730s. Monotype typographer Dan Rhatigan theorized that the Letraset version deliberately "garbled" the original Latin text to better match the letter frequency of the English language.
The sections of De finibus bonorum et malorum from which Lorem ipsum ultimately derives is one in which Cicero proposes that pleasure be obtained rationally rather than impulsively. The relevant sections as printed in the source is reproduced below, with fragments used in Lorem ipsum underlined. Letters in square brackets were added to Lorem ipsum and were not present in the source text:
What follows is an English translation by Harris Rackham as printed in the 1914 Loeb edition, with words at least partially represented in Lorem ipsum underlined:
See also
Notes
References
External links
The original De finibus bonorum et malorum (Book 1) from Cicero, on Latin Wikisource