Have you ever seen a mock-up of something with a weird language making up the text?
What you’ve seen is called Lorem Ipsum and it’s placeholder text that’s been around since the 1500’s. Remarkably, it has remain unchanged for 5 centuries!
Fun fact! Lorem Ipsum was created by an unknown printer who took type and scrambled it up to make a type specimen book. It became super popular in the 1960’s and then made its way to becoming the standard filler text in desktop publishing. Based in Latin literature, it’s not random but also really doesn’t mean anything.
Designers use Lorem Ipsum when creating mock-ups because it has a flow or distribution similar to normal copy. It can be useful to get an idea of how much copy needs to be created or can simply act as placeholder in templates that are being sold for print and web.
Next time you see this Latin-based copy you know where it came from and how ancient it actually is in addition to it’s purpose.