It has long been known that if the content of a page is understandable, the reader’s attention is distracted. The reason for using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more or less normal letter layout, so that, compared to using ‘Text goes here, text goes there’, the content of the filled-in area on the page looks more like real text. Many publishing software packages and website editors already use Lorem Ipsum as their default fill text, and if you search the Internet for ‘lorem ipsum’ you will find many websites in their early stages of development. Many versions of this text have appeared in recent years, sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally (with added humour and the like).
Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not just random text. Its roots lie in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2,000 years old. Richard McClintock, a professor of Latin at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, was looking for one of the less certain Latin words, consectetur, from a passage of Lorem Ipsum, and as he searched for occurrences of the word in classical literature, he discovered its unmistakable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero’s “De finibus bonorum et malorum” (On the Ends of Good and Evil), written in 45 BC. The book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, and was very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, is from the line in paragraph 1.10.32.
The standard passage of Lorem Ipsum, in use since the 16th century, is given below for your convenience. Paragraphs 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from Cicero’s “De finibus bonorum et malorum” are also given here in their exact original form, supplemented by the English versions of 1914, translated by H. Rackham.