Lorem Ipsum (a.k.a. “lipsum,” a.k.a. “greeking”) is basically nonsense text that is used as a placeholder for actual text that has yet to be determined. It looks like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lipsum is commonly used by publishers and graphic designers when they want to get a feel for what the document will look like in terms of layouts, typefaces, font sizes/colors, etc. Sometimes, lipsum is used even if the actual text is known. For example, when taking an opinion survey of different possible layouts, it’s important for the observers to pay more attention to the layouts than to what the wording might be.

Lipsum is deliberately formulated to appear natural, with words that vary in size, and that are combined into sentences of typical appearance. In this way, the text will word-wrap properly, and in all other ways seem real at first glance.

You’ll find a random Lorem Ipsum generator at www.lipsum.org. Just tell it how much text you need, then cut and paste it where you want it.

Software Quality Assurance testers should take heed of this, too. Having a source of lipsum text handy can help when testing applications that have fields for notes, comments, descriptions, etc. For one thing, it saves time not having to come up with something original to type in. More importantly, it’s much better than just leaning on the A key (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA), because it makes for a much more reasonable test when the test data approximates the size and spacing of real data, allowing the screen or report being tested to word-wrap properly.

Wikipedia has a nice article on Lorem Ipsum, how it came about, and how it’s used: wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum.

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