Anyone who has ever worked with website or print layout mockups has encountered the mysterious text that begins with "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..." This jumble of words may seem meaningless, but it has a rich history and a very practical purpose. Let's explore where Lorem Ipsum came from and why it remains the industry standard in design.
The History of Lorem Ipsum
Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not a random string of letters. The text traces back to the treatise "De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (On the Ends of Good and Evil), written by the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero in 45 BC. The original passage begins with "Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." — "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks it out and wants to experience it..."
The text in its familiar form appeared in the 1960s, when the company Letraset began producing transfer sheets with font samples. A modified fragment of Cicero was used to showcase typefaces. Later, in the 1980s, Lorem Ipsum made its way into Aldus PageMaker — one of the first desktop publishing systems — and has since become an industry standard.
Why Use Placeholder Text
The main reason is to keep the focus on design. When a mockup contains real text, clients or colleagues start discussing the content instead of the visual structure. Lorem Ipsum is neutral: it resembles real text in word length and paragraph distribution but doesn't distract from evaluating typography, spacing, and composition.
There's also a practical reason: real content is often not ready by the time the mockup is created. Placeholder text allows the designer to work without delays, showing the client the structure of the future page before the copywriter has prepared the final texts.
Why Not Real Text
Using real text at the prototyping stage carries risks. First, the client may mistake draft content for the final version and approve it without considering quality. Second, if the real text turns out to be shorter or longer than expected, the layout will need to be reworked. Lorem Ipsum mimics the natural distribution of Latin alphabet characters, making layout evaluation more reliable.
Alternatives to Lorem Ipsum
Classic Lorem Ipsum isn't the only placeholder text option. There are many alternatives:
- Cyrillic placeholder text. For Russian-language projects, it makes more sense to use a Russian placeholder — it more accurately reflects the word length and visual rhythm of Cyrillic text.
- Themed generators. There are generators that create text in the style of a specific theme: cooking recipes, IT product descriptions, and more. This adds context when presenting a mockup.
- Realistic data. For forms and tables, it's better to use plausible but fictional data: names, addresses, phone numbers. This helps evaluate the actual appearance of the interface.
When NOT to Use Placeholder Text
There are situations where Lorem Ipsum does more harm than good:
- Final presentations. If you're showing a mockup for approval, placeholder text can create an impression of incompleteness. Use real or closely approximated content.
- UX testing. During usability testing, participants should interact with meaningful text — otherwise the results will be unreliable.
- Content-driven design. If the design revolves around content (landing pages, articles, product cards), work with real texts from the very beginning.
- Multilingual projects. Latin Lorem Ipsum is not suitable for evaluating layouts in languages with different characteristics: Arabic, Chinese, Thai.
Best Practices
A few recommendations for using placeholder text:
- Generate text of the right length — no more, no less. This helps assess how the layout will look with real content.
- Mark placeholder text in the mockup: add a "placeholder" label or use a distinctive text color.
- For Cyrillic projects, use Russian-language placeholder text — it more accurately reflects the visual rhythm.
- Replace Lorem Ipsum with real content as early as possible in the development process.
Conclusion
Lorem Ipsum has traveled from Cicero's philosophical treatise to an indispensable designer's tool. It helps focus on visual structure without being distracted by content. However, it's important to remember: placeholder text is fine in the early stages, but the final product should always contain real, thoughtful content.
You can generate Lorem Ipsum of any length using our placeholder text generator. For working with text content, our text comparison tool is also useful for quickly finding differences between versions.
