: What's with all the Lorems and the Ipsums? Is there a better way to represent text in a layout or design? "Lorem Ipsum" is good at taking your attention away from the text to showcase the

@Turnbaugh909

No shortage of good answers here, but I'd like to defend the proper use of Lorem Ipsum.


Firstly, Lorem Ipsum is just a placeholder or stop gap substitute for content. That is, it should only be used if you don't have real content to use. As many of the Lorem-Ipsum-critical articles point to, content is just as critical a component of a design as anything else. However the final content is not always available.

One reason to use Lorem Ipsum is that it allows you to move ahead with a design before a single word of content has been created. This is the same as using placeholder images in your design. Just because the real content isn't ready yet doesn't mean you can't begin your design.
Another reason why Lorem Ipsum is popular is precisely because it looks like real language at first glance, but it clearly isn't. Some people here are suggesting using text from books or other websites, but these all have downsides without providing any benefits. Fist off, there are copyright issues to copying other people's articles and reproducing them in mockups you intend to distribute. Secondly, when using real text, you're more likely to accidentally allow the placeholder text to slip into the production version of the layout without being replaced.
Additionally, Lorem Ipsum generators are really convenient. You can generate texts of any length and be assured that it doesn't contain any potentially offensive or otherwise distracting content. Because it's not real text, you can also easily modify it (trimming, repeating, punctuating, grouping, etc.) to suit your needs without worrying about grammar/syntax.


So, if you have the actual content, then sure use it. Don't go out of your way to replace it with Lorem Ipsum. However, in many cases you won't have the actual content to work with (e.g. designing a template that will be used for many different pages/articles or for dynamic content, such as search results), in which case any text you use will still be a placeholder and any sample text that has a normal distribution of letters/word lengths/punctuation/etc. will be equally effective.

Wrong ways to use Lorem Ipsum include:


Repeating the same sentence or phrase over and over again. This defeats the purpose of using Lorem Ipsum. Instead, use a generator to generate the content length you need.
Using Lorem Ipsum for logo design or other projects where typographic details are a crucial element and Lorem Ipsum won't display the letter forms that will be in the final product.
Using Lorem Ipsum for projects in a language not based on the latin alphabet.
And, as mentioned earlier, using Lorem Ipsum when you can use the real content instead.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Ravi4787994

I always put in a rough example of text that would go there. So if it's say an article page then copy and paste some content from a BBC article just so similar text will fill the space.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Hamm6457569

[Late edit, because I just realized none of us answered one of the key questions: "Why do we use it?"]

Lorem ipsum and its alternatives are used for two reasons. The first is visual: we want to set up the text styles but don't have the real text available yet, or we want to show the client (or the art director) a mock-up. The second is practical: dummy text can be used to fill copy space in a layout. If it reflects the word lengths of the eventual copy (normal English writing, academic writing and text intended for younger readers would all have different characters-per-word and words-per-sentence averages), it lets copy writers know what their target word count should be.

In InDesign, specifically, you can replace the default dummy text (which is decent, but doesn't reflect contemporary writing rhythms well) with anything you like. You can, for example, grab a book from Project Gutenberg and use its text.

To create your own custom dummy text, save your choice of text in a file called "placeholder.txt" and copy it to the InDesign application folder. Every time you use Type > Fill With Placeholder Text thereafter, the content of your custom file will be used instead of ID's defaults.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Speyer780

As discussed here, it depends on the client. Some get so caught up in the content (change this headline! I don't like this photo! We don't do charts that way!) that they can't see the design they're supposed to be giving feedback about. Others want real examples so they can judge the layout more accurately. In addition to Lorem Ipsum, I often put placeholder content in magenta, because nobody colors anything magenta, and it's very easy to say to the client "anything in pink is dummy copy." Then you can use real copy, but they'll ignore it as they should.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Goswami567

IMO, the better way is to use the actual text that will be used in the final design. That text is an integral part of the design and it shouldn't be abstracted away. What may work with dummy text may not work with the actual text. If your copy is an afterthought to your design, you're not going to be as effective.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Bethany839

I often use texts from a previous work (for the same client of course!).

I use Lorem Ipsum only if I have no text at all. And when I use it, I try to establish with my client aproximatly how many words there's gonna be in the text area. There's nothing more annoying than having to much or not enough space for the final text.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Speyer780

I'm no expert, but my experience with Lorum Ipsum is that my intended audience (usually product stakeholders and developers) finds it distracting. You want them to focus on layout, spacing, and typographic stuff, but instead they keep trying to figure out how to translate or decode it.

I've had better luck using the first few paragraphs of Moby Dick. Everybody immediately recognizes it, understands without being told that it is just placeholder text, and (most important) they don't want to read it.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Jessie844

This history is not for you its for others who also somewhere want to know about lorem ipsum incase

From Wikipedia:


Lorem Ipsum commonly used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout. The lorem ipsum text is typically a section of a Latin text by Cicero with words altered.

Even though "lorem ipsum" may arouse curiosity because of its resemblance to classical Latin, it is not intended to have meaning.
Where text is comprehensible in a document, people tend to focus on the textual content rather than upon overall presentation, so publishers use lorem ipsum when displaying a typeface or design elements and page layout in order to direct the focus to the publication style and not the meaning of the text In spite of its basis in Latin, use of lorem ipsum is often referred to as greeking, from the phrase "it's all Greek to me" which indicates that this is not meant to be readable text.






a very detailed example from designinformer about how lorem ipsum is killing our design.



Now Answer to your question :


Why They Say You Shouldn’t Use Lorem
Ipsum (and Why It’s Okay)
What’s the problem with Lorem
Ipsum?




My List for Dummy Text :

i don't know about experts because i am still struggling to be,
there are some random text generator which i mostly use


Lipsum
Adhesiontext
malevole
Dummy text English or lipsum
Random Text Generator
this one allow us to select dummy text in 10+ language i use this most of the times

Vote Up Vote Down