Lorem Ipsum Meaning: What It Says and Why It Must Go

What Is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem ipsum is fake text that designers put into a layout before the real words exist. It starts with "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet", and it looks like Latin. So what is the lorem ipsum meaning? In short, almost nothing. It is a scrambled cut of a real Latin book, changed on purpose.

That is exactly why it works. Readers cannot follow it, so they look at the design instead of the words. Meanwhile, the letters and word lengths look like a real language. As a result, a page full of lorem ipsum shows how the final text will sit on the screen.

Here is the opening that almost every designer has seen:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

You can make as much of it as you need with our free Lorem Ipsum Generator. However, this guide is mostly about the other end of its life: making sure it never reaches a live page.

Lorem Ipsum Meaning in English

Word for word, the famous line only half makes sense. That is because the first word has lost its start. "Lorem" is not a Latin word at all. It is the end of "dolorem", which means pain or sorrow.

• Lorem is part of dolorem, "pain".
• Ipsum means "itself".
• Dolor sit means "it is pain", and amet means "may love".
• Consectetur adipiscing elit comes from "pursues, to obtain, wants", with the last word cut from velit.

So a loose reading of "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" is "pain itself, because it is pain". Clearly, nobody chose it for the message. Instead, people picked these words because they look like ordinary text and mean nothing to most readers.

Where Lorem Ipsum Comes From

The source is a book by Cicero, the Roman writer. Its title is De finibus bonorum et malorum, or "On the Ends of Good and Evil", and he wrote it in 45 BC. The passage sits in Book 1, sections 32 and 33.

The original line reads "Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet". In English, that is roughly "Nor is there anyone who loves pain itself, because it is pain". So the real sentence is about pleasure and pain. The dummy text just keeps its sound.

Who found the source

For a long time, nobody knew where the text came from. Then Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar in Virginia, traced the odd word "consectetur" back to Cicero. You can read the full story in the Wikipedia article on lorem ipsum.

How it became the standard

Many people claim that a printer used lorem ipsum in the 1500s. However, there is no proof of that. What we do know comes later. In the 1960s, Letraset sold sheets of rub-on letters with lorem ipsum printed on them. Then, in the 1980s, desktop software such as Aldus PageMaker shipped it as sample text. After that, it was everywhere.

Why Designers Use Placeholder Text

Placeholder text lets a team build a page before the copy is ready. Without it, a designer would have to wait. Or worse, they would type "text here" twenty times, which looks nothing like real writing.

When a client sees real words, they start editing them. That helps later. But in a design review, it pulls attention away from spacing, fonts and colors. Lorem ipsum avoids that, because there is nothing to argue with.

Lorem ipsum has short words and long ones, commas and full stops. Therefore, line breaks and paragraph shapes look close to the final result. A single repeated word cannot do that.

Where it falls short

Still, real copy is often longer or shorter than the dummy text. A heading that fits in Latin may wrap onto three lines in German. So test with real words before launch, too.

Kinds of Placeholder Text

The term "placeholder text" has two meanings. It is worth keeping them apart.

Dummy copy in a design

This is lorem ipsum and its cousins. Some teams use fun versions, such as bacon ipsum or cupcake ipsum. Others use "Hipster ipsum". They all do the same job, and you must replace all of them before launch.

The placeholder attribute in forms

In HTML, placeholder is also an attribute. It puts a light hint inside an empty field, such as "you@example.com". That hint belongs on the live site. So when we talk about removing placeholder text, we mean dummy copy, not form hints.

<input type="email" placeholder="you@example.com">

Even so, a form hint is not a label. Screen readers may skip it, and it vanishes when someone types. Therefore, give every field a real <label> as well.

What Happens If It Goes Live

Lorem ipsum on a live page is one of the most common launch mistakes. It slips through on pages nobody checks: a footer column, an "about the author" box, a product tab or a 404 page.

• Visitors notice. A block of fake Latin makes a business look unfinished.
• Search engines index it. Google can show the dummy text as your page snippet.
• It thins the page. Words that mean nothing add length but no value.
• It spreads. One template with lorem ipsum can repeat it on hundreds of pages.

In fact, you can see the problem on any search engine. Search for "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" with a word like "services", and you will find real business sites showing dummy text to the world.

How to Find Placeholder Text

You cannot fix what you cannot see. So start by finding every page that still carries dummy copy.

Scan one page

Run the page through the free SEO Checker. Its "Placeholder text" check looks for the classic line "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet". It also flags a block that says nothing but "Your text here". However, it skips a page whose title is about lorem ipsum, such as this guide.

Search your whole site

Next, search Google for site:yourdomain.com "lorem ipsum". This shows indexed pages that still contain it. It only finds pages Google has crawled, though. Therefore, also search inside your CMS.

Search the source

• In WordPress, search posts, pages and widgets for "lorem".
• In a theme or template folder, search the files for "lorem ipsum" and "dolor sit amet".
• In a page builder, check reusable blocks and saved templates.

A text search is fast, but it can miss cut-down versions. So also look for "dolor sit", "consectetur" and "adipiscing". Those words almost never appear in real English copy.

How to Replace It

Replacing placeholder text is a writing job. No tool can do it for you, because only you know what the page should say. Still, a simple routine makes it quick.

Step 1: List every spot

Write down each page and block you found. Include the template name, because one fix there can clean many pages at once.

Step 2: Write the real words

Keep it short and plain. A footer blurb needs one or two sentences. An author box needs a name, a role and a line about experience. If you have nothing to say, remove the block instead.

Step 3: Check the length

Real text is rarely the same length as the dummy text. Paste your copy into the Word Counter to compare. Then preview the page on a phone, where long lines wrap first.

Step 4: Scan again

Run the SEO Checker on the fixed page. The row should turn green. The video below walks through the whole process on a sample page.

Better Ways to Work

The surest fix is to need less dummy text in the first place. Many teams now write a rough draft of the real copy before design starts. It does not have to be final. It only has to be true.

Draft headings, button labels and the first paragraph early. These parts shape a layout the most. Lorem ipsum can then fill only the long body text.

Some teams mark every placeholder with a clear tag, such as "TODO" or a bright color. That way, nothing hides in plain sight. A last search for that tag before launch catches anything left behind.

Finally, put "scan for placeholder text" on your launch list, next to broken links and missing titles. It takes a minute, and it saves you the embarrassment of fake Latin on a live page.

Common Mistakes

• Leaving lorem ipsum in a footer, sidebar or widget that nobody reads during review.
• Shipping a page template with dummy text, so every new page inherits it.
• Mixing up form placeholder hints with dummy copy, and removing useful hints.
• Using a form placeholder instead of a real label.
• Replacing dummy text with filler like "coming soon" that says just as little.
• Testing only with lorem ipsum, then finding that real headings break the layout.

Each of these takes minutes to fix once you know about it. That is why a scan before launch is worth the effort.

Questions and Answers