Lorem Ipsum Generator
Generate placeholder text in paragraphs, sentences or words, from classic Lorem ipsum, Cicero or English, as plain text or HTML.
Overview
Lorem ipsum is placeholder text: words with the shape of prose and none of its meaning, used to fill a layout before the real copy exists. It is scrambled Latin from Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC; lorem is what is left of dolorem, pain. The often repeated story of a sixteenth-century printer has never been traced to a source. What is documented is its use on Letraset transfer sheets in the 1960s and in desktop publishing software from the 1980s, which is how it reached every designer.
Web interface
Set the amount, the unit and the word bank; the text appears at once in the field below. Changing the amount keeps what is already there and adds or removes from the end, and Regenerate draws a new passage from the same settings. The line under the text counts its words, characters and paragraphs. Copy copies the text, Download saves it.
| Unit | Range | What one of them is |
|---|---|---|
| paragraphs | 1 to 50 | three to six sentences |
| sentences | 1 to 100 | 8 to 19 words with up to two commas, a capital and a full stop |
| words | 1 to 1,000 | one word; the result is a run of words without punctuation |
The default, five paragraphs, comes to about 300 words. A value above the range is brought down as you type it; an empty field or a 0 becomes 1 when you leave the field.
Word banks
| Bank | Words | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Classic Lorem Ipsum | 92 | the words of the familiar passage, the safest choice for a layout |
| Cicero, De Finibus | 72 | words from the surrounding Latin, less recognisable |
| English placeholder | 59 | words from English pangrams, for when Latin would look like a mistake to a reviewer |
Words are drawn at random and never twice in a row, so the result is not Latin or English and means nothing.
Latin has no w, k or y, and neither Latin bank contains one, so a layout
that fits Lorem ipsum can overflow once English copy arrives; the English bank is closer to real text in
width.
Options
| Option | Effect |
|---|---|
| Start with the standard opening | begins with Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua., 19 words; in the words unit, the same words without punctuation. Unavailable on the English bank |
| Include numbers | adds a three-digit figure about every twenty words |
| ALL CAPS | upper cases the whole text |
The figures sit at fixed positions, at the fourteenth word and every twentieth after it, so they stay where they are when the option is switched off and on or the amount grows. A text under fifteen words gets one in the middle. A figure is never placed straight after a full stop, where it would open a sentence, and never inside the standard opening; it moves on to the next word instead. In the words unit a figure takes the place of a word, so 100 words stay 100.
Capitals, numbers and the output format change the text you can see rather than drawing a new one. Only the unit, the bank, the opening and Regenerate draw new words.
Output
| Format | Result |
|---|---|
| Plain text | paragraphs separated by an empty line |
<p> | each paragraph in <p>…</p>, one per line |
<li> | each paragraph in <li>…</li>, without a surrounding list, so it fits into a <ul> or an <ol> |
<div> | each paragraph in <div>…</div> |
Download saves lorem-ipsum.txt, or lorem-ipsum.html when a
wrapper is selected; the HTML file holds the elements only, not a whole page. Nothing needs escaping, because
every word in the banks is plain lower case letters. The character count includes the tags.
Placeholder text has a way of reaching production. Search a finished page for lorem before it
ships.
No API
There is no API for this tool. The text is made in the browser; in a script, packages such as
lorem-ipsum for Node.js or lorem for Python do the same.
Privacy
Nothing leaves the browser. The text is generated on the page, and Copy writes to the clipboard only when you press it.