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Why is it traditional to use Latin Pseudo-Latin in example pages? Is actual hypothetical content too confusing?
In this documentation page I snarfed chunks of text from wikipedia -- does this make the page more confusing than if I used Latin or Sanskrit?
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Why do web developers and graphic designers use it? Lorem Ipsum helps us to present design concepts to clients without the actual meaning of the copy distracting them. The random text enables people to fully focus on the aesthetics and/or the user journey in the case of web design projects.
With Lorem Ipsum, design has no soul nor emotion. By using real content, you force yourself to think about the message you want to communicate to your users.
Lorem ipsum text isn't ideal for high-fidelity prototypes which might be presented to clients, stakeholders, or end users for review and feedback. You're not able to focus on the layout. Designers often argue that using lorem ipsum allows them to focus on the layout.
The famous lorem ipsum dolor passage is not Latin at all. As explained by a site dedicated to the passage, it's actually quite historic:
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
As for an explanation of why:
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
+1 for allowing me to learn something new, I didn't know this. Cool.
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