Generate placeholder & dummy text in 13 languages — as paragraphs, words or characters.
Lorem Ipsum is the most widely used placeholder text in the world. It originates from a work by Cicero written in 45 BC and has been used in the printing industry since the 16th century. Designers and developers use Lorem Ipsum to test layouts without the content distracting from the design. Our generator also supports dummy text in 12 additional languages.
First, select your desired language from the dropdown menu. Then choose whether you need paragraphs, words or characters, and enter the desired amount. For classic Latin, you can additionally choose whether the text should start with the well-known "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...". Click "Generate" and copy the text to your clipboard with one click.
Lorem Ipsum has a surprisingly precise origin. In 1982 Latin scholar Richard McClintock identified the passage as a fragment from Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum ("On the Ends of Good and Evil"), written 45 BC. The original sentence reads Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet — "There is no one who loves pain itself". The version we know today is a garbled variant, likely produced during the Renaissance when typesetters needed a sample text that looked like natural language but conveyed no meaning.
The text became the standard placeholder through Venetian typographer and publisher Aldus Manutius, who distributed printable specimen sheets featuring this passage from the 1500s onward. Aldus also invented the octavo book format, the italic typeface style and the semicolon as punctuation. In the 20th century Lorem Ipsum had a revival through Letraset rub-down lettering (1960s) and later Adobe PageMaker DTP (from 1985), which shipped the text as sample copy. Today it lives inside every wireframe tool from Figma to Sketch.
Why a garbled Cicero text specifically? Three properties make Lorem Ipsum unbeatable: first, a letter distribution matching the average frequency of Western European languages, which makes typefaces look realistic; second, the absence of recognizable words, so no distracting meaning sneaks in; third, rhythmic variation in word lengths simulating organic text flow. Real content — say a Wikipedia excerpt — would lure reviewers into discussing the text instead of the layout. This trap is well documented since Jakob Nielsen's UX studies in the 1990s.
For professional mockups don't pick the output randomly — match it to the expected real content size:
Deutsch for DACH market mockups (umlauts take more horizontal space), Latin for international reviews.lorem or ipsum — leftover placeholder text in production is one of the most common QA failures.Real-world contexts with recommended values:
characters, value 160 — matches the current limit (as of 2024).155 characters — Google truncates the snippet with an ellipsis above that.words, value 6-10 — tests line break and font size on mobile.Despite its strengths, Lorem Ipsum backfires in two scenarios: user testing and stakeholder reviews with non-designers. The moment real users see a wireframe, pseudo-Latin distracts from understanding; they sense something is "missing" but cannot evaluate content. Real-text snippets from existing copy work better. Clients without design background also frequently read Lorem Ipsum as "broken" or "unfinished" — project leads routinely report reviews where "Latin text" appears as the headline critique. In those cases show empty layout or a short real-text stub instead. For SEO-relevant pages Lorem Ipsum must never reach the index: search engines flag it as thin content. Before deploy: set noindex or replace the text.
noindex.characters mode with value 155 for an optimal preview.