Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
• Vivamus viverra dolor at fringilla volutpat.
• Aenean mattis odio nec mi iaculis maximus ac vitae nisl.
• Sed convallis massa nec elit fringilla, ut facilisis metus tristique.
• Donec posuere lectus et congue pellentesque.
• Fusce et sapien eget lectus fermentum blandit mattis auctor erat.
• Nulla blandit neque quis lectus bibendum dapibus.
• Suspendisse hendrerit libero nec tempus ultricies.
• Proin iaculis lacus eget dignissim sodales.
• Donec eu augue in leo tempor vulputate quis sit amet nisl.
• Maecenas aliquam quam sit amet ex faucibus rhoncus ut at purus.
• Curabitur rhoncus turpis non arcu pharetra sollicitudin.
• Etiam ac nunc nec dui elementum rutrum in sit amet elit.
• Sed condimentum nisl id fermentum ornare.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis sed sapien porttitor, ullamcorper dui porttitor, blandit lectus. Mauris feugiat blandit bibendum. Mauris nisl ligula, auctor vitae eros non, porta placerat mauris. Duis scelerisque semper dui a bibendum. Aenean aliquam interdum nulla, et suscipit diam cursus ultricies. Pellentesque sem nunc, auctor quis quam a, egestas lacinia elit. Curabitur non justo arcu. Pellentesque felis arcu, tempus id dapibus id, hendrerit eget ex. Proin tellus sapien, pretium ut leo quis, gravida venenatis enim. Nulla luctus condimentum nulla ac ornare. Nam sollicitudin, ligula eget fringilla pellentesque, massa leo commodo neque, ut commodo tortor ex.

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.