Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed eleifend nunc non leo varius, quis tempor ipsum hendrerit. Phasellus tristique semper eros, eget consequat odio mollis vel. Proin consequat nisl sit amet ultricies vehicula. Nulla facilisi. Pellentesque sodales, nisl at malesuada congue, ipsum ipsum finibus est, sit amet sagittis elit justo ac justo. Vivamus tincidunt nisi id arcu facilisis, a lobortis velit dapibus. Etiam nec diam et turpis rhoncus consectetur. Donec vel lorem lacinia, maximus ante nec, fringilla neque. Integer feugiat, magna a varius tincidunt, odio leo malesuada libero, nec sollicitudin neque ex non sapien. Suspendisse potenti. Suspendisse vitae convallis risus. Sed dignissim arcu ac mauris fermentum, vitae tristique nulla fermentum. Vivamus vitae risus a augue vestibulum auctor vel id turpis.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem mo sequatu autem vel eum iure veniam quis nostrum exercitationm corporisiex aleisequatur? Quis autem vel eum. At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium volup tatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi.
Until recently, the prevailing view assumed lorem ipsum was born as a nonsense text. “It’s not Latin, though it looks like it, and it actually says nothing,” Before & After magazine answered a curious reader, “Its ‘words’ loosely approximate the frequency with which letters occur in English, which is why at a glance it looks pretty real.”
As Cicero would put it, “Um, not so fast.”
The placeholder text, beginning with the line “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit”, looks like Latin because in its youth, centuries ago, it was Latin.
Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar from Hampden-Sydney College, is credited with discovering the source behind the ubiquitous filler text. In seeing a sample of lorem ipsum, his interest was piqued by consectetur—a genuine, albeit rare, Latin word. Consulting a Latin dictionary led McClintock to a passage from De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (“On the Extremes of Good and Evil”), a first-century B.C. text from the Roman philosopher Cicero.
In particular, the garbled words of lorem ipsum bear an unmistakable resemblance to sections 1.10.32–33 of Cicero’s work, with the most notable passage excerpted below:
“Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.”
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