“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit” is probably the most-typeset sentence in the history of publishing, and almost none of it means anything. It isn't gibberish invented for the purpose, though — it has a real, two-thousand-year-old source, and a specific job it's still better at than almost any alternative.
Where it actually comes from
The text is a scrambled, rearranged fragment of a genuine passage from De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (“On the Ends of Good and Evil”), a philosophical work written by the Roman statesman Cicero in 45 BC. The famous opening words, “Lorem ipsum,” aren't even a real Latin phrase — they're a broken fragment of dolorem ipsum (“pain itself”), split apart by whatever process first mangled the passage.
Nobody knows for certain exactly when or how it happened, but the leading theory traces it to a 15th-century typesetter who used the passage to make a type specimen book — scrambling the words so the sample would look like a real page of typeset text without any single word standing out and drawing the eye.
It stayed a niche typesetting curiosity for centuries after that, until Letraset — a company that made sheets of rub-on lettering — started printing it on packaging in the 1960s to demonstrate their fonts. When Aldus PageMaker, one of the first desktop-publishing programs, adopted it as the default placeholder text in the 1980s, it became the industry standard it still is today.
Why it's deliberately not real Latin
The garbling isn't a flaw — it's the entire point. If placeholder text is grammatically correct and meaningful, in any language, a reader's eye automatically starts parsing it for meaning. That's exactly the wrong reaction when you're supposed to be judging a layout: font choice, line length, spacing, hierarchy. Lorem Ipsum's letter and word-length distribution closely mirrors ordinary Latin-alphabet prose, so it fills a page the way real text would, without being readable enough to distract from what's actually being reviewed.
Why designers still use it today
- It's a shared convention. Every designer, developer and client who's seen a mockup before recognises it instantly as placeholder text, so nobody mistakes it for a mistake or for real copy that was approved.
- It fills space realistically. Compared to a repeated word or a string of “xxxx,” it reads as a natural block of body copy at a glance, which is closer to how the finished page will actually look.
- It's genuinely neutral. Real English filler text (even a famous quote or a joke) can bias how people react to a layout, or distract reviewers into commenting on the words instead of the design. Latin-looking text mostly avoids that.
When you should not use Lorem Ipsum
| Situation | Use Lorem Ipsum? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Early wireframes and layout mockups | Yes | Content isn't final yet; the point is judging structure, not copy |
| Buttons, labels, nav items, short UI text | No | Real character count matters here — a button that fits “Lorem” may not fit “Continue to checkout,” and length varies a lot by language too |
| Final client or stakeholder review | No | Placeholder text left in at sign-off reads as unfinished work, and distracts reviewers from judging the real content |
| Accessibility or readability testing | No | Screen readers and reading-level checks need real sentence structure, not scrambled Latin |
| A quick internal design review | Yes | Same reasoning as wireframes — the audience already knows to ignore the words |
The simplest rule of thumb: if the exact length, language or meaning of the text will affect the design once it's real, use real (or at least realistic, correctly-sized) sample copy instead of Lorem Ipsum.
How to generate your own
- Open Altto's Lorem Ipsum Generator.
- Choose paragraphs, sentences or words, and pick how many with the slider.
- Copy the result straight into your mockup, CMS or codebase — click Generate again any time for a fresh version at the same settings.
It runs entirely in your browser tab, so there's no page reload and nothing sent to a server — the text is generated locally every time.
Common questions
What does Lorem Ipsum actually say?
Why is Lorem Ipsum in Latin instead of English?
When should I NOT use Lorem Ipsum?
Is Lorem Ipsum copyrighted?
Can I generate a specific amount of Lorem Ipsum text?
Need placeholder text right now?
Altto's Lorem Ipsum Generator runs entirely in your browser — free, no sign-up, and a fresh block of text every time you click Generate.