How to use the lorem ipsum generator
- Pick an amount. Type a number from 1 to 100 and choose paragraphs, sentences or words. Three paragraphs fill a typical blog layout; 10 to 20 words make a headline or a button label.
- Pick a format. Plain text is right for design software and documents. HTML wraps each paragraph in
<p>tags (sentences and words come as one paragraph), ready to paste into a page template or a CMS code view. - Copy. Press Copy text, or select the text in the box. Generate new text gives you a fresh random version with the same settings.
Leave “Start with Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” ticked if you want the familiar opening that tells everyone at a glance the text is a placeholder. Untick it for text that starts at random, which reads less repetitive when many boxes on a page show it.
What lorem ipsum is and where it comes from
Lorem ipsum is scrambled Latin taken from De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Ends of Good and Evil), a work on ethics by Cicero from 45 BC. The best-known passage comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33, where Cicero writes “neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet”, roughly “nor is there anyone who loves pain itself because it is pain”. Cut in the middle of the word dolorem, the passage starts with “lorem ipsum”, and words were later dropped, changed and added until the text stopped meaning anything.
That is the point of it. Printers and typesetters needed text that looks like a real language, with natural word lengths and punctuation, but does not draw the reader into its meaning. The habit passed to graphic design, then to desktop publishing and web templates, which is why lorem ipsum appears in almost every theme demo today.
When placeholder text helps, and when it hurts
| Situation | Use lorem ipsum? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Testing a font, a type scale or line length | Yes | You judge the shape of the text, not what it says. |
| Building a template that will hold many different articles | Yes | The real content does not exist yet and will change. |
| A home page, a landing page or a product page | Better not | The headline and the first lines decide the layout. Dummy text hides whether they fit and whether they sell. |
| Showing a design to a client or to users | Better not | People comment on the Latin instead of the design, and nobody can judge whether the page answers their question. |
| Anything that could go live by mistake | Never | Lorem ipsum left on a published page looks careless, and search engines index it like any other text. |
The most useful placeholder is a rough draft of the real words. A headline with the right number of characters and a first paragraph that says what the page really offers test the layout and the message at the same time.
Getting placeholder text in Word, Google Docs and code editors
In Microsoft Word, type =lorem(3,5) on an empty line and press Enter for three paragraphs of five sentences (=rand() gives English sample text instead). In VS Code, type lorem in an HTML file and press Tab to get a paragraph from Emmet, or lorem10 for ten words. Figma and many design tools have plugins for it. Google Docs has no built-in command, which is where a generator like this one helps.
Is the text random
Yes. Each sentence is built from a fixed list of Latin words taken from the classic lorem ipsum passage, with 6 to 14 words per sentence, an occasional comma, and 4 to 7 sentences per paragraph. The opening sentence, when ticked, is always the same: “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.” Because the words are random, two people generating the same amount get different text.
Methodology and limits
- Words
- A fixed list of the Latin words used in the traditional lorem ipsum passage. Words are picked at random, with no word repeated twice in a row.
- Sentences
- 6 to 14 words each, starting with a capital letter and ending with a period. Longer sentences get one comma after a random word.
- Paragraphs
- 4 to 7 sentences each. In plain text, paragraphs are separated by a blank line. In HTML, each paragraph is wrapped in a
<p>element on its own line. - Words mode
- Exactly the number of words you ask for, as one block of text with a capital at the start and a period at the end.
- Limits
- Up to 100 paragraphs, sentences or words per click. The text is Latin-looking, not correct Latin, and it should never be published.
Sources
- Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum, book 1, The Latin Library, the original Latin of sections 1.10.32 and 33
- Lorem Ipsum generator, Emmet documentation, the lorem abbreviation in code editors