What does lorem ipsum mean?

“I was setting up a newsletter on the computer, and all the examples were in a foreign language! Why?”

After asking for more details, we found that the language in question was lorem ipsum, not a language at all.

Typically beginning “lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetueur,” it’s a pseudo-Latin nonsense phrase mostly lifted from a treatise on ethics written by Cicero in 45 B.C. According to the Microsoft support website, the original phrase by Cicero is “Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit,” which translates as "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain."

Lorem ipsum, however, has had letters added and removed to the point where it’s no longer proper, meaningful Latin. For example, according to http://generator.lorem-ipsum.info/, a webpage for generating lorem ipsum and other text, sometimes the letters K, W, and Z are added randomly, just to give an idea of what they would look like.

Because it’s meaningless, lorem ipsum is often used as filler text in design, such as in our patron’s newsletter example. It’s supposed to give an idea of what the finished product will look like without distracting the eye.