Until recently, the prevailing view assumed lorem ipsum was born as a nonsense text. “It’s not Latin, though it looks like it, and it actually says nothing,” Before & After magazine answered a curious reader, “Its ‘words’ loosely approximate the frequency with which letters occur in English, which is why at a glance it looks pretty real.” As Cicero would put it, “Um, not so fast.” The placeholder text, beginning with the line “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit”, looks like Latin because in its youth, centuries ago, it was Latin. In particular, the garbled words of lorem ipsum bear an unmistakable resemblance to sections of Cicero’s work, with the most notable passage excerpted below.
Sed a libero. Mauris sollicitudin fermentum libero. Phasellus volutpat, metus eget egestas mollis, lacus lacus blandit dui id egestas quam mauris ut lacus. Fusce risus nisl, viverra et, tempor et, pretium in, sapien. Cras ultricies mi eu turpis hendrerit fringilla.In auctor lobortis lacus. Praesent turpis. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo.

“The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.”
Sed mollis, eros et ultrices tempus, mauris ipsum aliquam libero, non adipiscing dolor urna a orci. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Nulla facilisi. Sed mollis, eros et ultrices tempus, mauris ipsum aliquam libero, non adipiscing dolor urna a orci. Duis arcu tortor, suscipit eget, imperdiet nec, imperdiet iaculis, ipsum.
Proin sapien ipsum, porta a, auctor quis, euismod ut, mi. Nulla neque dolor, sagittis eget, iaculis quis, molestie non, velit. Etiam rhoncus. Nunc interdum lacus sit amet orci. Phasellus leo dolor, tempus non, auctor et, hendrerit quis, nisi.
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