Consider this: You made all the required mock ups for commissioned layout, got all the approvals, built a tested code base or had them built, you decided on a content management system, got a license for it or adapted open source software for your client's needs. Then the question arises: where's the content? Not there yet? That's not so bad, there's dummy copy to the rescue. But worse, what if
Typographers of yore didn't come up with the concept of dummy copy because people thought that content is inconsequential window dressing, only there to be used by designers who can’t be bothered to read. Lorem Ipsum is needed because words matter, a lot. Just fill up a page with draft copy about the client’s business and they will actually read it and comment on it. They will be drawn to
This is quite a problem to solve, but just doing without greeking text won't fix it. Using test items of real content and data in designs will help, but there's no guarantee that every oddity will be found and corrected. Do you want to be sure? Then a prototype or beta site with real content published from the real CMS is needed—but you’re not going that far until you go
Websites in professional use templating systems. Commercial publishing platforms and content management systems ensure that you can show different text, different data using the same template. When it's about controlling hundreds of articles, product pages for web shops, or user profiles in social networks, all of them potentially with different sizes, formats, rules for differing elements things can break, designs agreed upon can have unintended consequences and look much different
If that's what you think how bout the other way around? How can you evaluate content without design? No typography, no colors, no layout, no styles, all those things that convey the important signals that go beyond the mere textual, hierarchies of information, weight, emphasis, oblique stresses, priorities, all those subtle cues that also have visual and emotional appeal to the reader. Rigid proponents of content strategy may shun the
But. A big but: Lorem Ipsum is not t the root of the problem, it just shows what's going wrong. Chances are there wasn't collaboration, communication, and checkpoints, there wasn't a process agreed upon or specified with the granularity required. It's content strategy gone awry right from the start. Forswearing the use of Lorem Ipsum wouldn't have helped, won't help now. It's like saying you're a bad designer, use less
You begin with a text, you sculpt information, you chisel away what's not needed, you come to the point, make things clear, add value, you're a content person, you like words. Design is no afterthought, far from it, but it comes in a deserved second. Anyway, you still use Lorem Ipsum and rightly so, as it will always have a place in the web workers toolbox, as things happen, not
Most text editors like MS Word or Lotus Notes generate random lorem text when needed, either as pre-installed module or plug-in to be added. Word selection or sequence don't necessarily match the original, which is intended to add variety. Presentation software like Keynote or Pages use it as a samples for screenplay layout. Content management software as Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, PHP-Nuke, WordPress, or Movable Type offer Lorem Ipsum plug-ins with
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure
Most of its text is made up from sections 1.10.32–3 of Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Boundaries of Goods and Evils; finibus may also be translated as purposes). Cicero famously orated against his political opponent Lucius Sergius Catilina. Occasionally the first Oration against Catiline is taken for type specimens: Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? (How long, O
