This content has been automatically translated from Ukrainian.
The phrase “Lorem ipsum” is familiar to anyone who has ever worked with design, layout, or website templates. It is a classic placeholder text used to demonstrate fonts, page structure, or the appearance of a document before the actual content appears. Such texts are called “dummy text” or placeholder text.
Despite its absurdity at first glance, Lorem ipsum has Latin origins. Its roots trace back to Cicero's work “De finibus bonorum et malorum” (“On the Ends of Good and Evil”), written in 45 BC. The modern version was distorted by typesetters in the 16th century—they took snippets of the original text and rearranged the words to create a neutral set of letters that looks like coherent language but has no meaning.
For the first time, Lorem ipsum began to be widely used in the 20th century thanks to the publishing templates of the company Letraset, and later in the digital age through editors like Aldus PageMaker. It is now a standard in web design: for example, when creating websites in Figma or WordPress, it is often inserted into blocks to see what the finished page will look like.
The main idea of such text is to not distract the reader. When a designer shows a layout to a client, the content should not influence the perception of composition, colors, or typography. Therefore, the Latin-like “nonsense” text is an ideal option.
Today, Lorem ipsum has many amusing variations created for the entertainment of designers and developers. The web has seen generators for every taste: “Cupcake ipsum” fills text with names of pastries and frostings, “Zombie ipsum” features phrases from the horror genre, and “Bacon ipsum” includes descriptions of meat and grilling.
So, Lorem ipsum is not just a collection of strange words, but a part of design and publishing culture that helps creators focus not on the text, but on the form.
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