Generate customised placeholder text for mockups, wireframes, and development. Choose paragraphs, sentences, or words. Optionally wrap in HTML paragraph tags.
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…" is the standard placeholder text used in graphic design, web development, typography, and printing. It has been the industry standard since the 1960s, when Letraset popularised it on dry-transfer sheets. The text is derived from a scrambled and altered passage of De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum ("On the Ends of Good and Evil") by the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero, written in 45 BC.
The original passage (from Book I, Section 32) reads: "Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem." ("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 some great pleasure.")
Placeholder text serves a critical function in design workflows: it lets stakeholders evaluate layout, typography, hierarchy, and whitespace without being distracted by the meaning of the content. When real content is used in mockups, reviewers often focus on editing the copy rather than evaluating the design. Cicero's mangled Latin is the perfect solution — it looks like natural text with varying word lengths, but no one can actually read it meaningfully.
Lorem ipsum should be replaced with real content before user testing and certainly before launch. Usability tests with placeholder text produce misleading results because test participants cannot meaningfully evaluate navigation, calls to action, or content hierarchy. Content-first design — where real copy informs the layout rather than being retrofitted — produces better outcomes, but Lorem ipsum remains invaluable for early-stage structural prototyping. When you replace it with real copy, paste the text into our word counter online to check length and reading time. Write and format the replacement content in our markdown editor online and export it as HTML.
"Lorem ipsum" does not translate to anything meaningful in Classical Latin — it is a scrambled excerpt from Cicero with words omitted and altered. The passage is from De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (45 BC). Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College, identified the source text in 1994 by searching for the obscure Latin word consectetur.
No. Lorem ipsum is placeholder text intended for design prototyping only. Publishing it on a live website signals to users that the site is unfinished, harms SEO (search engines may flag it as low-quality or duplicated thin content), and provides no value to visitors. Always replace all placeholder text before publishing.
The canonical standard paragraph begins: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing 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…" This is the version popularised by Letraset and later adopted by desktop publishing applications like Aldus PageMaker in the 1980s.
In VS Code with Emmet installed (built-in), type lorem and press Tab to generate a paragraph, or lorem5 for 5 words. In HTML, type p*3>lorem to generate three <p> elements each containing a Lorem ipsum paragraph. Most design tools (Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch) also have native Lorem ipsum fill-text features.