Tuesday, 28 September 2021

What are the origins of Lorem Ipsum?

 


Contrary to what one might think, the Lorem ipsum text, despite being meaningless, has noble origins.

Objectively composed of unrelated words, Lorem ipsum owes its existence to Marco Tullio Cicerone and to some steps of his De finibus bonorum et malorum (The highest good and the highest evil) written in 45 BC , a classic of Latin literature dating back more than 2000 years ago.

The discovery was made by Richard McClintock , a professor of Latin at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, who faced the impetuous recurrence of the dark word consectetur in the text Lorem ipsum researched its origins to identify them in sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of the aforementioned Cicero's philosophical work.

The words taken from one of the dialogues contained in the De finibus are therefore the pieces of the most famous nonsensical text in the world.

A discovery that has given greater importance to the Lorem ipsum which has remained on the crest of the wave since 500, that is when, according to Professor Richard McClintock, its use spread among the printers of the time.

Of course we know that to make it known to most was a publicity of the Sixties, that of the transferable Letraset character sheets: transparent adhesive sheets on which the Lorem ipsum text was imprinted easily transferable on the editorial products before the advent of the computer.

Lorem ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.