The lady doth protest too much, methinks
The spread of computers and layout programmes thus made dummy text better known. While in earlier times several lines of the Lorem Ipsum text were repeated in the creation of dummy texts, today the full text of Cicero’s ‘De finibus’ serves as the basis for many dummy text or Lorem Ipsum generators. Based on ‘De finibus’, these generators automatically create longer sections of the Lorem Ipsum text or various other filler texts.
The phrasal sequence of the Lorem Ipsum text is now so widespread and commonplace that many DTP programmes can generate dummy text using the starting sequence “Lorem ipsum”. Fortunately, the phrase ‘Lorem Ipsum’ is now recognized by electronic pre-press systems and, when found, an alarm can be raised. This avoids a publication going to print with overlooked dummy text.
Certain internet providers exploit the fact that fill text cannot be recognized by automatic search engines – meaningful information cannot be distinguished from meaningless: Target-generated dummy text mixed with a certain combination of search terms can lead to an increased frequency of visits by search machine users. As a consequence, advertising revenues, which rely on website ‘hits’, are increased.
It seems that only fragments of the original text remain in the Lorem Ipsum texts used today. One may speculate that over the course of time certain letters were added or deleted at various positions within the text. This might also explain why one can now find slightly different versions. Due to the age of the Lorem Ipsum text there are no copyright issues to contend with. Thus, Lorem Ipsum has only limited suitability as a visual filler for German texts.
If the fill text is intended to illustrate the characteristics of different typefaces, it sometimes makes sense to select texts containing the various letters and symbols specific to the output language. The most well-known dummy text is the ‘Lorem Ipsum’, which is said to have originated in the 16th century. Lorem Ipsum is composed in a pseudo-Latin language which more or less corresponds to ‘proper’ Latin. It contains a series of real Latin words.
This ancient dummy text is also incomprehensible, but it imitates the rhythm of most European languages in Latin script. The advantage of its Latin origin and the relative meaninglessness of Lorum Ipsum is that the text does not attract attention to itself or distract the viewer’s attention from the layout. One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.
He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked. “What’s happened to me?” he thought. It wasn’t a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little too small,