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What is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to create a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries but also the transition to electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It gained popularity in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker, which includes versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Why do we use it?

It is a well-established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The reason for using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, unlike using 'Content here, content here', which makes it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will reveal many websites still in their infancy. Various versions have developed over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes intentionally (injected humor and the like).

Where does it come from?

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not merely random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and by examining the occurrences of the word in classical literature, discovered the undeniable source. Lorem Ipsum originates from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.