Newsletter Production
Lorem Ipsum
Using Dummy Text in Your Newsletter
Sounds
like Latin, right? Well, it is—sort of. “Lorem ipsum” is the
beginning of a pseudo-Latin text passage that is widely used by designers
as a type of placeholder for text. In other words, it is “dummy text”
that is intended to be replaced with actual content and allows the
designer to envision what the page will look like with text in the proper
places. In the world of graphic design, this is referred to as “greeking.”
By using this “filler” text, designers can review the layout of the
publication without being distracted by the actual text. It can also help
when content is late in coming.
While
there are some recognizable Latin words in the “lorem ipsum”
passage, the meaning is pure gibberish and is complete with partial
phrases and words that are not even near to anything in Latin. Various
theories abound on its origin. A clue to its first use comes from the fact
that this passage, or something similar to it, has been in use since the
1500’s. It most likely came to be when a printer needed to produce
something with samples of text and picked up a selection of metal type. He
then inserted them into the printing press in somewhat random order and printed
away.
Its
popularity was cemented in modern times, however. When Aldus began selling
the desktop publishing program, PageMaker, it included the “lorem
ipsum” text as a sample
dummy text. It began to be used extensively and, well the rest is history.
It is now the most commonly used dummy text in the industry.
Want
to use “lorem ipsum” in your own newsletter design? Look no
further. You can find the complete text by clicking on lorem
ipsum. There
are numerous variations to be found on the Internet. However, take care to
check out your sources. People have been known to insert humorous, or even
risqué, additions into the filler text.
To
get a complete version of this dummy text, visit our version at lorem
ipsum. To generate your own version of lorem ipsum, visit lipsum.com.
Here you can customize the dummy text to fill in any size space you'd
like.
If
you are interested in a more modern form of filler text to use in your
document, check out these examples of variations on the “greeking”
concept:
http://www.lemurzone.com/notes/greeking.htm
http://www.duckisland.com/GreekMachine.asp
http://www.allmyfaqs.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Lorem_ipsum
http://www.captaincursor.com/code/dreamweaver/lorum_ipsum/
