Lorem Ipsum Generator

What is lorem ipsum?

Lorem ipsum is the standard placeholder text of the design and publishing industries. It looks like Latin, reads like a natural paragraph with varied word lengths, but means nothing, so a reviewer looks at the layout instead of the words. Designers drop it into wireframes, templates and print proofs wherever the real copy is not written yet, and this generator produces as much of it as you need, in paragraphs, sentences or an exact number of words.

Where the text comes from

The passage is a scrambled extract from De finibus bonorum et malorum ("On the ends of good and evil"), a treatise on ethics that Cicero wrote in 45 BC. Section 1.10.32 contains the sentence "Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit", roughly "nor is there anyone who loves pain itself because it is pain". The identification was made in the 1980s by Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar who traced the odd word "consectetur" back to the source.

An unknown printer in the 1500s is credited with chopping up the passage to make a type specimen book, and it has been the default filler ever since. Letraset dry-transfer sheets spread it through 1960s design studios, and Aldus PageMaker shipped it as sample text in 1985, which put the same words on every desktop publishing screen.

How this generator builds the text

Each sentence takes 6 to 14 words at random from a vocabulary of about 70 words drawn from the classic passage, capitalises the first word, inserts a comma in longer sentences and ends with a period. A paragraph is 4 to 7 such sentences. When "Start with Lorem ipsum" is on, the first sentence is always the traditional opening.

Example: the default request is 3 paragraphs. A paragraph averages (4 + 7) ÷ 2 = 5.5 sentences of (6 + 14) ÷ 2 = 10 words, so 3 paragraphs come to about 3 × 5.5 × 10 = 165 words, typically somewhere between 120 and 220. Asking for 50 words instead gives exactly 50, trimmed at a word boundary and finished with a period.

How to use this generator

1. Pick the unit: paragraphs for body copy, sentences for teasers and captions, words when a design needs an exact length.
2. Enter the amount (up to 50 paragraphs, 100 sentences or 500 words). The text regenerates as you change it.
3. Keep "Start with Lorem ipsum" ticked so the sample is instantly recognisable as placeholder, or untick it for a random opening.
4. Tick "Wrap paragraphs in <p> tags" if you are pasting into HTML, a CMS source view or an email template.
5. Click Copy, then paste. Generate new gives you a fresh variation of the same length.

Typical lengths for layout elements

Tips and pitfalls

• Match the real length. Filler that is much shorter or longer than the final copy hides overflow and wrapping problems. Measure real drafts with the word counter and generate the same amount.
• Test the extremes. Generate a one-word headline and a 14-word one to see how the layout copes with both.
• Remember accents and long words. Lorem ipsum has no diacritics and few very long words, so German, Finnish or French copy may still break a tight design.
• Remove it before launch. Search the project for "lorem" and "ipsum"; stray placeholder text is a common embarrassment on live sites.
• Use realistic data elsewhere. Pair the text with real-looking numbers and identifiers, for example from the UUID generator, so tables and forms are tested with plausible content.