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I just encountered a new phrase: "Lorem ipsum" Admittedly, it is specialized vocabulary, but I found its existence interesting, and it has an fascinating history.
I learned of this term when I saw a design for an ad. A buddy of mine called me over saying "You studied Latin. Is this Latin?" Along the bottom of the ad there was a block of text that looked like Latin. Some words were recognizable as Latin, but other words seemed odd and the whole thing seemed like gibberish. Here is what I saw:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
When I did an online search for some of the more unusual Latin words in the text, I stumbled upon the truth. The text is called a Lorem Ipsum after the first two words. There is no official standard version of it. The term can, in fact, be used for any nonsense text used to display font or layout, not just text containing or starting with "Lorem ipsum."
Here are some online descriptions of the history:
When I was a graphic design student, that was called "Greeking"
Basically, it's meant to be characters that look like text but aren't readable so that in a page layout, for example, you can see what the density/color of the text will in the design be without getting distracted by what the words say.
When I was a graphic design student, that was called "Greeking"
Basically, it's meant to be characters that look like text but aren't readable so that in a page layout, for example, you can see what the density/color of the text will in the design be without getting distracted by what the words say.
I've seen many instances of Lorem Ipsum over the years -- I always like to keep some on hand, but I usually throw in a fnord. It's a modified version of text by Cicero:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum#History_and_discovery
I love Lorem Ipsum. It was always fun to fill in blank space with quasi-Latin.
Here is a good reference and Ipsum generator:
To quote:
"Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32."
I've always used greeking to describe horizontal pencil lines that imitate lines of copy, and Lorem Ipsum is the nonsense text we apply as a placeholder in a design.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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