Lorem ipsum is a fictitious text used in the world of printing and graphic design since the early 16th century.
Lorem Ipsum became a standard dummy text when an unknown printer randomly arranged letters on a printing press, creating a copy of the letters. This text has survived almost unchanged for five centuries, and has also entered the era of computer graphic design. It became popular in the 1950s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum excerpts, and later with the publishing system AldusPageMaker, which also included a version of Lorem Ipsum.
Many people think that Lorem Ipsum is just a random piece of text, but it is not. Its roots can be found in a classical Latin work published in 45 BC, i.e. two thousand years ago. Richard McClintock, a professor of Latin at Hampden-Sydney College (USA), chose one of the more obscure words from the Lorem Ipsum passage – “consectetur”, and began to search for it in classical Latin literature. In this way, he found the undoubted source of this word and Lorem Ipsum in the book “De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (On the Limits of Good and Evil), paragraphs 1.10.32 and 1.10.33. The author of the work is Cicero, who wrote it in 45 BC. This treatise on ethical theory was very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum text, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..” is based on paragraph 1.10.32.
A classic example of Lorem Ipsum text, used since the 16th century, can be seen at the bottom of the site. Also included are paragraphs 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from Cicero’s book “De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum”, and their English translations by H. Rackham in 1914.