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The words are the traditional scrambled Latin taken from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero’s de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC and used by typesetters since the 1500s. It is not meaningful Latin and is not supposed to be: text you can read is text you stop looking at the layout to read.
A layout needs words in it long before the words exist. This generator produces paragraphs, sentences, individual words or list items of scrambled Latin, as plain text or as HTML ready to drop into a template, with a checkbox that starts the passage on the classic opening and a button that redraws the whole thing when the shape of the first attempt did not suit. A word and character count sits alongside the output.
The Latin is deliberately meaningless, and that is the feature rather than a shortcoming. Readable English pulls a reviewer into reading the copy and arguing with it, when the question actually on the table is whether the column is too wide and the line spacing too tight.
Asking for 2 paragraphs with the classic opening switched on produced 90 words in total. The first paragraph led with the familiar 19-word line — "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua." — and then ran to four further sentences. The second paragraph was three sentences.
Word mode behaves differently from what people sometimes expect. Asking for 12 words with the opening still on returns "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit sed do eiusmod tempor." The number requested is the whole of the output, not a further twelve words bolted onto the end of a 19-word opening, so a short request simply gives you the front of that line.
Sentences run to between 6 and 16 words and paragraphs to between 3 and 6 sentences, and a comma is inserted only in sentences of 9 words or more. The result carries roughly the rhythm of prose, which is what makes it worth anything for judging how a block of body copy will sit on the page.
The passage is not nonsense invented for the purpose. It is scrambled Latin drawn from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero’s "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" — "On the Ends of Good and Evil" — written in 45 BC, and typesetters have been setting it since the 1500s. Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar at Hampden-Sydney College, traced the passage back to Cicero.
The scrambling matters as much as the source. Words have been cut, joined and reordered until the text stopped meaning anything, which is precisely why it reads as language without ever being read.
Placeholder text conceals a problem it cannot solve: real copy is almost never the length of the box drawn for it. A heading that fits in three words of Latin may need nine in English, and a paragraph sized around a generated block can collapse the moment the actual sentence arrives. Draw the design against the shortest and the longest plausible real text as well as against this.
The second risk is more embarrassing than technical. Lorem ipsum reaching production is a well-documented way to end up in a screenshot somebody shares, so a search for "lorem" across the repository before a release is cheaper than trusting that every block was replaced.
Because a reviewer who can read the placeholder starts editing it. Meaningless Latin keeps attention on spacing, measure and hierarchy, which is what a draft layout is actually asking about at that stage.
No. The source is genuine Cicero, but the words have been altered and shuffled to the point where no sentence carries a meaning. Anyone who reads Latin will recognise fragments and nothing beyond them.
Enough to fill the region at the size it will really be, and then a second draw that is noticeably longer. A layout that has only ever held one length of text has not been tested against the copy that eventually arrives.