I’ll bet you have all seen the following lines at some stage:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

It’s a favorite pastime of publishers and web designers - we take these lines (up to an entire page) and use them as filler text for a formatted page to preview the final version. This “Lorem ipsum” text may or may not be scrambled in the process to make it even less coherent, but it hardly matters since the original text is in Latin.

What Does it Mean?

Well, it’s a filler, designed to take attention away from the actual meaning of the text. We use it when we are sending a document out for feedback, but don’t want the receiver to focus on the content – just the layout or design. It’s a placeholder used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a manuscript, document, webpage or presentation. It shows elements such as font, typography and layout whilke removing the distraction of meaningful content.

Specifically, it’s page 36 of sections 1.10.32-3 of the 1914 Loeb Classical Library Edition of De finibus dolorum et malorum, a 45 BC text written by Marcus Tullius Cicero about philosophy, and dedicated to Marcus Junius Brutus, the same Brutus who assassinated Julius Caesar. Is there a deeper meaning to this selection? Probably not. In fact, the first word of this text isn’t even a complete word. Here’s the first paragraph of section 1.10.32.

Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos, qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt, neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci[ng] velit, sed quia non numquam [do] eius modi tempora inci[di]dunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

As you can see, the first word, “lorem," is actually the latter part of the word “dolorem," and the rest of the text actually used as filler text (bolded) is taken randomly from the paragraph in question. So, really, there’s no way to translate it at all. This was most likely done to discourage actual interpretation of the text, since it was only meant to be filler. Just for reference, here’s what that paragraph actually means:

[32] But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing of a pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, butoccasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces noresultant pleasure?

How it Became Popular

Back in the 1960s, the Lorem ipsum text was already being used in catalogues by Letraset, an English typeset company. Letraset used the placeholder text to fill out their print layouts for advertising agencies, and many other companies followed suit. By the 1970s the text had founds its way into most typography samples, and was sort of an inside joke among publishers, sort of like how the Wilhelm scream has been used in Hollywood since the 1950s.

By the 1980s, however, the art director of the Apple Macintosh, Laura Perry, decided to use it in the desktop publishing program Aldus PageMaker. Since then it has found its way into a number of other digital publishing programs, including Apple Pages, Microsoft Word, Adobe Dreamweaver, and even Wordpress themes.

Personally, I prefer using the "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," an English-language pangram —a phrase that contains all of the letters of the English alphabet. Depending on how popular this post is, I might do a history of that at some stage!