History of Lorem Ipsum

Lorem Ipsum has a surprisingly long history. It originates from a piece of classical Latin literature written by the famous Roman philosopher and orator, Cicero. Around 45 BC, Cicero wrote a book titled “De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum,” which translates to “On the Ends of Good and Evil.” In this book, Cicero discusses ethics and philosophy. Some of the text from this work was extracted, scrambled, and modified over time to create what we now know as Lorem Ipsum.

Though the words in Lorem Ipsum come from an actual text, over centuries, they’ve been altered and rearranged so that they no longer form coherent sentences. The purpose of this transformation was to make the text visually appear like readable content without distracting the viewer with meaningful language.

In the 1500s, Lorem Ipsum began to appear in typesetting and printing. Printers needed a way to demonstrate different fonts and layout options without using meaningful content. As printing technology developed, so did the need for placeholder text that didn’t distract the audience. Lorem Ipsum became a popular choice because of its close resemblance to the rhythm and structure of natural English.

However, it wasn’t until the 1960s that Lorem Ipsum became widely popular. At that time, a typesetting company called Letraset included passages of Lorem Ipsum in its promotional materials. The company used it to show off different fonts, and soon, other designers and typesetters followed suit. As digital design emerged in the late 20th century, Lorem Ipsum found a new life in the world of web design. With the rise of desktop publishing in the 1980s and 1990s, Lorem Ipsum became a standard placeholder text used by both amateur and professional designers.