Maybe the literary canon wasn’t really your thing, or you didn’t quite delve into assigned readings at school; but we’ve all surely come across this classic line many times. If we were in a certain music game show, we could get the answer to this riddle in one note. But of coure we aren’t, so let’s play a game where we can guess it after hearing one sentence: “lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit (…)”.
While each of us has encountered lorem ipsum at least once in their lifetime, we don’t really bother to find any extra information about this phrase. On the one hand, it’s because it perfectly does its job and lets us assess the layout of the text without digging into its content, and on the other hand, it’s simply so ubiquitous. Let’s take a look at what’s hidden behind this rather inconspicuous text.
Where does lorem ipsum come from?
To whom can we attribute the authorship of a text which would appear on many websites even before the existence of the most famous copypastas? It was by no means an easy task to get it right, as even though the beggining of the phrase makes sense, the rest is full of quasi-latin words and meaningless phrases. Richard McClintock, a professor of Australia’s Hampden-Sydney College, faced the challenge and successfully determined that it’s a part of Cicero’s philosophical work “On the ends of good and evil” that dates back to 45 BC.
The popular treatise on ethics regained attention in the 16th century, when an unknown printer used mixed up text to fill the pages in order to check the layout, font design, and the arrangement of paragraphs. Being a nonsensical text, lorem ipsum lets the recipient focus on the layout without getting too invested in the content.
The text has withstood centuries and the dynamic changes of the market; after all, it initially functioned in traditional printing, and then was used for many years in modern printing industry. Even digitalisation didn’t stand in its way, as it has perfectly fit into virtual life and filled millions of columns on websites. It’s also proven to be successful in the marketing industry as it helps present content layout on flyers or advertising materials.
Watch out for traps – the evolution of lorem ipsum
It’s been emphasised many times that, from the linguistic perspective, the text perfectly mimics content created in an actual functioning language, mostly due to its varied word lengths and quasi-grammatical structures. The text has evolved significantly over the years and the change is visible even in the first words! In Cicero’s treatise, it’s acutally dolorem that’s mentioned, not lorem, yet only few seem to remember it nowadays.
Over the years, creative Internet users couldn’t help themselves and filled the text with funny bits or adapted it to the theme of the website under construction. Lorem ipsum that’s wine industry related? There it goes. Or perhaps you need a “Back to the future” themed text or DeLorean Ipsum? No problem. Although it defies the purpose of lorem ipsum – after all, it’s meant to be nonsensical and not distract the reader – some people are going for such solutions. It seems that we’re limited only by our creativity, but if we’re looking for the easiest and safest option to present to clients during meetings and presentations, the web is full of dummy text generators which will handle this task for us.
Lorem ipsum like lingua franca. And what happens once final content appears on the site?
The biggest advantage of this sort of dummy text lies in its versatility. Nowadays, few can boast knowledge of Latin and that’s why lorem ipsum serves its role so well – it imitates a real text, but does not distract the reader. It works flawlessly no matter the language that printers, website administrators or graphic artists speak. However, the moment we start using real information, it’s important to remember to meet the expectations of the target recipients form all around the world and ask professionals for help in translation. All you have to do is fill the form to send us the content you intend to publish on your website, flyers or advertising materials and we’ll make sure that your message will make the right impression.
