Lorem Ipsum is derived from paragraphs 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s philosophical treatise “De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (On the Ends of Good and Evil), written in 45 BC.
The text has been scrambled and altered over centuries to become nonsensical placeholder text. Here is how the story unfolds:
1. The Original Text
The original text by Cicero is a discourse on ethics. The most famous “Lorem ipsum” passage is a distortion of the Latin phrase: “Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet…”, which translates to, “Nor is there anyone who loves, pursues, or desires pain itself, simply because it is pain…”
2. How it Became a Placeholder
Over the centuries, printers and typographers scrambled, cut, and jumbled Cicero’s text into improper, nonsensical Latin. The first word, “Lorem,” is actually just the end of the Latin word “dolorem”. This was intentionally done so readers would focus on the visual appearance, font, and layout of a document without being distracted by readable content.
3. Modern Popularization
While its use as a printing tool might go back further, Lorem Ipsum was propelled into the modern digital age in the 1960s by the design company Letraset, who used it on their dry-transfer typography sheets. By the 1980s and 1990s, desktop publishing software (like Aldus PageMaker and Microsoft Word) adopted it as default filler text.
Today, the standard Lorem Ipsum text remains the global industry standard for mock-ups, wireframes, and web design. If you’d like to read more about its historical timeline, you can explore the Wikipedia Lorem Ipsum Entry or generate your own custom text on Lipsum.com. [1, 2]