• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

“Pain Of Itself”: The Meaning Behind The “Lorem Ipsum” Placeholder Text

March 12, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

You’ve likely come across the Lorem Ipsum placeholder text at some point in your life. A typical passage, designed to be unintelligible, goes likes this:

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. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Advertisement

The placeholder text is used as an example when demonstrating screens displaying text, or as placeholder words in documents on your computer. Occasionally, people forget to remove the placeholder text, leading to such inventions as the Lorem Ipsum Dolor and Cheddar wrap.

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

The garbled text no longer has any meaning, but detective work by Classics professor Richard McClintock pointed out that it is a scrambled version of Cicero’s De finibus.

Advertisement

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.

A 1914 translation of this text, as reported by Slate, reads:

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.

Essentially, the first part is a scrambled passage of Cicero that can be summarized as “no pain, no gain”.

Advertisement

It’s often claimed that the placeholder text dates back to an anonymous printer in the 1500s who scrambled a piece of Latin text as a way of demonstrating the quality of the print. However, further detective work by professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Versailles Philippe Cibois found that the source of the Lorum Ipsum placeholder text is likely from the 1914 translation, which also happens to begin a new page with the words “lorem ipsum”.

The placeholder text has been in use by newspapers in the UK since the 1960s, and perhaps has its origin at the UK company Letraset in 1959, but that’s far from the 1500s origin the Internet would have you believe.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China Evergrande bonds suspended as prices slump
  2. At unfinished Evergrande apartments in central China, buyers seek answers
  3. Italy’s PD leader Letta seen winning Siena parliamentary seat – early count
  4. First Case Of Human Infection By Silverleaf Fungus That Usually Infects Trees

Source Link: "Pain Of Itself": The Meaning Behind The "Lorem Ipsum" Placeholder Text

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version