Lorem Ipsum Generator
Generate placeholder text for mockups, wireframes, design layouts, and development. Choose how much text you need and copy it with one click.
What Is Lorem Ipsum?
Lorem ipsum is placeholder text — dummy text used in the design and layout of documents, websites, and printed materials when the actual content isn't ready yet. It looks like Latin but is intentionally nonsensical, based on scrambled passages from De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum ("On the Ends of Good and Evil"), a philosophical work by Cicero written in 45 BC.
The standard lorem ipsum passage that most generators start with is:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua…
This specific version was popularised in the 1960s by Letraset, a company that printed transfer sheets of letters for graphic designers. When desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker arrived in the 1980s, lorem ipsum came with it — and it has been the standard placeholder text in design and development ever since.
Why Use Lorem Ipsum Instead of Real Text?
When presenting a design or layout, using real text creates distractions. Reviewers read the words, react to the content, and comment on things that aren't relevant to what's being evaluated — the layout, the typography, the visual hierarchy. Lorem ipsum sidesteps this entirely. Because it reads like text without actually conveying meaning, people look at the design rather than the words.
There are a few practical reasons it remains the standard:
- It looks like real text. The distribution of letter lengths and word lengths in lorem ipsum is roughly similar to English, so it fills space in a visually realistic way. Random or repeated text (like "XXXXX" or "text text text") doesn't.
- Reviewers focus on design, not content. When the text is clearly placeholder, nobody argues about whether a headline should say "Welcome" or "Get Started."
- It's universally understood. Any designer, developer, or client who has worked in the industry recognises lorem ipsum immediately. It signals "this is a prototype."
When Should I Use Lorem Ipsum?
Lorem ipsum is the right choice in these situations:
- Wireframes and mockups — when you're showing a layout structure to a client or stakeholder and the copy isn't written yet
- UI component development — when building a card, modal, or article template and you need realistic text to test how the layout responds to content of different lengths
- Print and PDF templates — newsletter layouts, brochure designs, reports — anywhere you need to see how a page looks before the real content exists
- Typography testing — checking how a font renders at different sizes, weights, and line heights
Lorem ipsum is less appropriate when testing real user interactions, doing usability testing, or presenting to audiences who will be confused by seeing it. In those cases, use real or realistic content.
Paragraphs vs. Sentences vs. Words
The generator above lets you choose between four units:
Paragraphs are the most natural unit for most uses. A paragraph is 3–8 sentences of varied length. Use paragraphs when you're filling a content area and want realistic-looking blocks of text.
Sentences are useful when you need exactly one or two lines — a subtitle, a card description, a tooltip, a notification message.
Words let you specify an exact count. This is useful when you know the copy will be a specific length — a 10-word headline, a 30-word meta description, a 15-word button label.
Bytes lets you target a specific file size. Useful for testing upload limits, API payload sizes, or storage calculations. The output is approximate because a byte in lorem ipsum text maps to one ASCII character plus spacing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is lorem ipsum real Latin?
It's based on Latin, but the words have been scrambled and some are not real Latin words. The passage comes from Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, but it was deliberately altered in the 1960s to remove meaning. It's not grammatically correct Latin — it's intentionally nonsensical.
What does "lorem ipsum" mean?
The phrase "lorem ipsum" itself doesn't mean anything coherent. It comes from the Latin word dolorem (pain/grief) — the original line is "Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet…" ("Nor is there anyone who loves grief itself…"). "Lorem ipsum" is just the start of a garbled version of that phrase.
Will Google penalise my site for using lorem ipsum?
If lorem ipsum text is published live on a real page that Google indexes, yes — it can be treated as low-quality or thin content. Lorem ipsum is placeholder text for development and design, not for publication. Never push live pages to production with lorem ipsum still in place.
Are there alternatives to lorem ipsum?
Yes. Some designers prefer to use a passage of real English text when they want reviewers to be able to roughly judge readability. Others use "blind text" generators that produce nonsense text from real English words. Lorem ipsum remains the most widely used because it's instantly recognisable as placeholder content.
How long is a "standard" lorem ipsum paragraph?
There isn't a strict standard, but the widely used opening passage is about 100–200 words. This generator produces paragraphs of 50–100 words — long enough to fill a realistic content block, short enough to stay proportional in a typical page layout.
