The most well-known dummy text is the ‘Lorem Ipsum’, which is said to have originated in the 16th century. Lorem Ipsum is composed in a pseudo-Latin language which more or less corresponds to ‘proper’ Latin. It contains a series of real Latin words.

This ancient dummy text is also incomprehensible, but it imitates the rhythm of most European languages in Latin script. The advantage of its Latin origin and the relative meaninglessness of Lorum Ipsum is that the text does not attract attention to itself or distract the viewer’s attention from the layout.

Moreover, in Latin only words at the beginning of sentences are capitalized; this means that Lorem Ipsum cannot accurately represent, for example, German, in which all nouns are capitalized. Thus, Lorem Ipsum has only limited suitability as a visual filler for German texts.

If the fill text is intended to illustrate the characteristics of different typefaces, it sometimes makes sense to select texts containing the various letters and symbols specific to the output language.

It seems that only fragments of the original text remain in the Lorem Ipsum texts used today. One may speculate that over the course of time certain letters were added or deleted at various positions within the text. This might also explain why one can now find slightly different versions. Due to the age of the Lorem Ipsum text there are no copyright issues to contend with.