Lorem Ipsum
© Thomas W. Shawcross 20 Sep 2005
“Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit"
source: Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum
Translation:
"Nobody likes pain for its own sake, or looks for it and wants to have it, just because it is pain....").
Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (Of the Extremes of Good and Evil) in 45 B.C. I suppose most of us have read it by now, although there is always that hard-core minority that waits for the movie to come out.
But seriously, I find it interesting that this excerpt, written by a man who is considered to be the greatest Latin prose stylist, has devolved into what is now the industry standard for dummy text.
On the off chance that you are not familiar with dummy place-holder text, here are two sample paragraphs for your reading pleasure:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Morbi ut quam eget augue mattis ultricies. Nullam eros. Nam dignissim neque ac ligula. Nulla eget eros. Morbi dapibus. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Maecenas vitae est in sem iaculis consectetuer. Donec volutpat felis id justo. Sed interdum feugiat magna. Maecenas semper. Quisque sollicitudin risus condimentum magna. Suspendisse in enim.
Curabitur interdum, velit vitae euismod consectetuer, lorem ante molestie magna, rutrum pretium arcu odio vehicula massa. Donec semper tincidunt nibh. Integer sapien metus, feugiat a, mattis eget, rhoncus at, mi. Suspendisse nisi pede, ornare ac, tincidunt vel, pharetra quis, elit. Maecenas enim metus, dapibus quis, gravida tempor, ornare quis, mi. Proin vel libero ac lacus mollis cursus. Vivamus placerat. Aenean sit amet risus. Quisque tempus felis in orci. In sem lectus, faucibus nec, sagittis sed, porttitor tempor, tellus. Morbi sodales. Aenean eget risus. Nam imperdiet sem non risus.
“But, Tom” you say, “isn’t that an excerpt from Ulysses by James Joyce?”
Ha, Ha! . . . No. It may be equally as incomprehensible as the text in Ulysses, but let me assure you that it is intended to be dummy text. You see, there is a never-ending demand for dummy text in the printing and web-design industries, and Lorem Ipsum is used to satisfy this demand.
Designers have known for many years that using actual text in design mock-ups distracts the reader from looking at the page layout. Instead, the readers spend their time trying to read the content (and maybe find some hidden message in the text). Using phrases such as “content here, content here” doesn’t work either, as the pattern doesn’t look like normal text. Lorem Ipsum looks like normal text. It has nearly the same distribution of letters as English-language text.
“But, Tom” you say, “how do you know that Lorem Ipsum was derived from text written by Cicero?”
Well, I looked it up. According to my research, “Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source.” Good for him. (see http://www.lipsum.com/ )
Lorem Ipsum has been used since the 1500’s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Since gaining that toe hold, Lorem Ipsum has thrived through five centuries, easily making the leap to Letraset electronic typesetting sheets in the 1960’s and, more recently, into desktop publishing software such as Aldus Pagemaker.
I wonder how Cicero would have felt if he had known that some of his gold would later be spun into straw? Industry-standard straw, to be sure, but nevertheless, straw. Then again, how many of us leave the legacies we had hoped to be remembered for? Archimedes, for example, was so chuffed about his discovery that the ratio of the volume of a sphere to that of the smallest right circular cylinder in which it fits is 2:3, that he had it carved on his gravestone. (Note to self: decide which of my favorite discoveries in geometry should be carved on the gravestone pour moi).
I wonder if there is a story behind why “Lorem ipsum” was used as the first two words in the dummy text? It is the shortened form of the Latin words Dolorem and Ipsum. Placed together, they translate as “Pain For Its Own Sake” or possibly “Pain Itself.” Maybe the unknown printer who assembled that eponymous type specimen book in the 1500’s was having a bad day?
“Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit"
source: Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum
Translation:
"Nobody likes pain for its own sake, or looks for it and wants to have it, just because it is pain....").
Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (Of the Extremes of Good and Evil) in 45 B.C. I suppose most of us have read it by now, although there is always that hard-core minority that waits for the movie to come out.
But seriously, I find it interesting that this excerpt, written by a man who is considered to be the greatest Latin prose stylist, has devolved into what is now the industry standard for dummy text.
On the off chance that you are not familiar with dummy place-holder text, here are two sample paragraphs for your reading pleasure:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Morbi ut quam eget augue mattis ultricies. Nullam eros. Nam dignissim neque ac ligula. Nulla eget eros. Morbi dapibus. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Maecenas vitae est in sem iaculis consectetuer. Donec volutpat felis id justo. Sed interdum feugiat magna. Maecenas semper. Quisque sollicitudin risus condimentum magna. Suspendisse in enim.
Curabitur interdum, velit vitae euismod consectetuer, lorem ante molestie magna, rutrum pretium arcu odio vehicula massa. Donec semper tincidunt nibh. Integer sapien metus, feugiat a, mattis eget, rhoncus at, mi. Suspendisse nisi pede, ornare ac, tincidunt vel, pharetra quis, elit. Maecenas enim metus, dapibus quis, gravida tempor, ornare quis, mi. Proin vel libero ac lacus mollis cursus. Vivamus placerat. Aenean sit amet risus. Quisque tempus felis in orci. In sem lectus, faucibus nec, sagittis sed, porttitor tempor, tellus. Morbi sodales. Aenean eget risus. Nam imperdiet sem non risus.
“But, Tom” you say, “isn’t that an excerpt from Ulysses by James Joyce?”
Ha, Ha! . . . No. It may be equally as incomprehensible as the text in Ulysses, but let me assure you that it is intended to be dummy text. You see, there is a never-ending demand for dummy text in the printing and web-design industries, and Lorem Ipsum is used to satisfy this demand.
Designers have known for many years that using actual text in design mock-ups distracts the reader from looking at the page layout. Instead, the readers spend their time trying to read the content (and maybe find some hidden message in the text). Using phrases such as “content here, content here” doesn’t work either, as the pattern doesn’t look like normal text. Lorem Ipsum looks like normal text. It has nearly the same distribution of letters as English-language text.
“But, Tom” you say, “how do you know that Lorem Ipsum was derived from text written by Cicero?”
Well, I looked it up. According to my research, “Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source.” Good for him. (see http://www.lipsum.com/ )
Lorem Ipsum has been used since the 1500’s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Since gaining that toe hold, Lorem Ipsum has thrived through five centuries, easily making the leap to Letraset electronic typesetting sheets in the 1960’s and, more recently, into desktop publishing software such as Aldus Pagemaker.
I wonder how Cicero would have felt if he had known that some of his gold would later be spun into straw? Industry-standard straw, to be sure, but nevertheless, straw. Then again, how many of us leave the legacies we had hoped to be remembered for? Archimedes, for example, was so chuffed about his discovery that the ratio of the volume of a sphere to that of the smallest right circular cylinder in which it fits is 2:3, that he had it carved on his gravestone. (Note to self: decide which of my favorite discoveries in geometry should be carved on the gravestone pour moi).
I wonder if there is a story behind why “Lorem ipsum” was used as the first two words in the dummy text? It is the shortened form of the Latin words Dolorem and Ipsum. Placed together, they translate as “Pain For Its Own Sake” or possibly “Pain Itself.” Maybe the unknown printer who assembled that eponymous type specimen book in the 1500’s was having a bad day?
posted by Tom Shawcross | 10:06 PM
4 Comments:
A blog like this can only be authored by Tom the great Shawcross
I loved it! Thanks for sharing it.
Very nice. Was 'porro' left out? e.g. Nobody 'by far' likes pain for its own sake.....(porro can be translated as 'by far'?)
-Jondel
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Post a Comment
<< Home