Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
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No, my loyal six readers, that is what designers call Lorem Ipsum (or 'Greeking') text. It is used in design layouts to show how the text would appear if there were any actual text. It's like FPO images. FPO stands for 'For Placement Only'.
Some agencies use humorous text that they have written about their agency as a text placeholder. This is fine to show how the text will look, but using nonsense is better because people are not distracted by textual content when they should be paying attention to the design. People will read text if it is in front of them. They can't not. See? You're doing it right now.
You're still doing it.
There are many lorem ipsum generators online, some which generate actual English words, some generate other types of eye-pleasing gibberish. My favorite was the Klingon generator from within Quark.
OK, my spellchecker wants 'Klingon' to be 'Clinton'. That's just sad.
So why is it called 'greeking'? A medieval Latin proverb reads, "Graecum est; non potest legi" (It is Greek; it cannot be read) -- as Latin was the lingua franca of scholars, Greek words were unintelligible. They might have been telling a joke, though. It's hard to tell with medieval Latin scholars.
The roots of lorem ipsum go way back to the 1500's to the dawn of mass printing itself. The Latin is a garbled chunk of Cicero's The Extremes of Good and Evil, the translation of which reads:
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?...
On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.
For a comparison, here's how my spellchecker translates it (the words in parenthesis are untranslatable, so I've taken--um--liberties):
Lore opossum dolor sit met, (award-winning design) elite, seed do (awesome) temper (top-notch websites) out labor et dolor magna Alicia. Ut enigma ad minim venom, quasi nostrum execration (3232 Design rules) labors nice out Aliquippa ex ea. commode consequent. Dues ate inure dolor in (really nice guy) in (and funny, too) veldt Esc cilium dolor emu fugal null parroter. Excepted snit (the best designer in Minneapolis) non provident, sun in cull quid office dessert molt animi id set labium.
Heady stuff. How can Aliquippa, PA (pop. 11,734) be in my dictionary but not 'Klingon'? Must be the opossums.
The reason I'm mentioning all this now is because last week at Home Depot I saw a box with a ceiling-mount light fixture that had the words 'Lorem Ipsum' on the side in the spot where the Spanish translation of the fixture's name should have been. Then I discovered that the Spanish word 'gringo' probably comes from the word for Greek, 'Griego'. As in 'It's Greek to Me'. You know, because gringos like me are unintelligible, almost as if I'm speaking in Greek. Well, speaking in Greek to a non-Greek speaker, anyway.
Though when it comes to my non-English fluency, I instead prefer to think of myself as having FPO conversations.
