Lorem ipsum, or lipsum as it is sometimes known, is dummy text used in laying out print, graphic or web designs. The passage is attributed to an unknown typesetter in the 15th century who is thought to have scrambled parts of Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum for use in a type specimen book. It usually begins with: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua."
The purpose of lorem ipsum is to create a natural looking block of text that does not distract from the layout. A practice not without controversy, laying out pages with meaningless filler text can be very useful when the focus is meant to be on design, not content. McClintock’s eye for detail certainly helped narrow the whereabouts of lorem ipsum’s origin, however, the how and when still remain something of a mystery, with competing theories and timelines.
So how did the classical Latin become so incoherent? According to McClintock, a 15th century typesetter likely scrambled part of Cicero’s De Finibus in order to provide placeholder text to mock up various fonts for a type specimen book. It is difficult to find examples of lorem ipsum in use before Letraset made it popular as a dummy text in the 1960s, although McClintock says he remembers coming across the passage in a book of old metal type samples.
As an alternative theory, someone tracked down a 1914 Latin edition of De Finibus which challenges the 15th century claims and suggests that the dawn of lorem ipsum was as recent as the 20th century. The 1914 Loeb Classical Library edition ran out of room on page 34 for the Latin phrase "dolorem ipsum", leaving one page dangling with a fragment that looked oddly modern to designers decades later.
| ID NUMBER | PRODUCT | QUALITY | QUANTITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1423 | Cotton | Good | 200kg |
| 3214 | Evo | Prime | 250kg |
| 4323 | Silk | Good | 200kg |
| 2342 | Elastane | Mediocre | 350kg |
Remixing a Classics Interpreting Nonsense
And anyways, as Cecil Adams reasoned, perhaps it seems reasonable to imagine that there was a version in use far before the age of Letraset. That tension between classic scholarship and practical publishing is part of what has kept the passage alive for generations.
