How it works
Placeholder text exists so that a layout can be judged on its shape rather than its content.
Real copy pulls the eye into reading; nonsense Latin does not, which is precisely the point.
Where lorem ipsum comes from
It is a scrambled extract from Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in
45 BC. The opening “Lorem ipsum” is a fragment of dolorem ipsum — “pain itself”. It has
been used by typesetters since at least the 1500s, and the modern form spread via Letraset
sheets and then PageMaker.
Why not just type “asdf asdf”
Lorem ipsum has roughly Latin-like word-length distribution, which produces a realistic
greyness on the page and realistic line-break behaviour. Repeated keyboard mashing does not,
and neither does English text, which designers cannot help reading.
A caution
Placeholder text has a habit of shipping. Search your codebase for “lorem” before release —
it has appeared on production sites, in printed annual reports, and at least once on a
billboard.