It wasn’t until last year that I was introduced to the use of “Lorem ipsum dolor” when designing web pages. Apparently, there’s this series of fake sentences constructed of faux-Latin words that typeographers have used for years as a placeholder or to see how real text would look in a given layout. It really does work quite well, even in longer applications (as you can see here).
However, what’s interesting is that a lot of sites have these placeholders live on Net, perhaps without realizing it, and they’re indexed by search engines. A few examples: here and here, and sometimes it just shows up as the title. It can even be spotted on sites overseas. In fact, on Google, a search for “Lorem ipsum dolor” brings up almost 5000 sites. I read an article last year that indicated that many major corporations had these dead templates sitting out in full view. Most have cleaned up their mess since.
If you’re curious, here’s a FAQ about our favorite fake Latin phrase. -ram
Posted in Just Plain Odd