Talk:Lorem ipsum

highlighting

I feel that the use of highlighting for the corresponding text is unwarranted in this article. Pages for this article in other languages use bolding as opposed to highlighting, and I believe this is more appropriate for the usage case. Personally I find its use here jarring and unnecessary. Given the fact that highlighting is rarely used on wikipedia I think this is the best solution to this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Symetrical (talk • contribs) 13:07, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

obtain pleasure in Cumae

The sections of De finibus bonorum et malorum from which Lorem ipsum ultimately derives is one in which Cicero promotes obtaining pleasure rationally instead of impulsively, in his home city of Cumae between himself and Lucius Manlius Torquatus, a young Epicurean, while another young Roman, Gaius Valerius Triarius, listens on.

I think some words are missing here. —Antonissimo (talk) 02:26, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@Antonissimo: Punctuation, perhaps? How does The sections of De finibus bonorum et malorum, from which Lorem ipsum ultimately derives, is includes one in which Cicero promotes obtaining pleasure rationally instead of impulsively, in his home city of Cumae between himself and Lucius Manlius Torquatus, a young Epicurean, while another young Roman, Gaius Valerius Triarius, listens on. Or perhaps less awkwarly Cicero proposes that pleasure be obtained rationally...

Would that resolve it? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:01, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Better: De finibus is a dialogue taking place in Cicero's home city of Cumae, with Lucius Manlius Torquatus, a young Epicurean, and another young Roman, Gaius Valerius Triarius. In the sections from which Lorem ipsum is derived, Cicero promotes … —Antonissimo (talk) 12:58, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I have rewritten the sentence and demoted to a footnote the incidental detail that lists the participants. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:27, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Better still. —Antonissimo (talk) 02:56, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

We now know the origin of lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum was created by James Mosley in 1966 according to research presented in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL1PDqzqhM4. Nosferattus (talk) 03:53, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

We would need a more credible source than YouTube. Peer review would be a good start. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:39, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Probably good for us to still watch this space though, I can assume we will gain more supplemental sources with time.

Additionally the youtube video has a Google Doc with various sources and references, some of which we may be able to pull https://docs.google.com/document/d/16ovZH3SzXRAMXJc1y8wJo67_d7SwIy92HKD39tyLxrI/edit?tab=t.0 ~2026-32691-52

There's also the point that this video does a lot of the legwork in organising and figuring out some of the sources we did have (ie identifying all the particular pages in the Cicero book that are pulled from) (talk) 13:05, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Meanwhile, see WP:FORK and especially WP:Self published sources. So it can't be used unless and until it has been verified by subject experts. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:14, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

This is a bit of a contraction of the framework for self published sources. The documentarian in question is an independent producer with an established history publishing for online science documentary outlet Veritasium. In this case the information in question, is sourced from a direct email from a senior manager at Letraset, that has been published in full only in the video documentary itself.

If all we are waiting for is for a major reliable news outlet to report this, citing the exact same video (which they will have to), then I think we can avoid both the citation laundering and the dilution of credit by treating this as a reliable source on the issue purely from the quality of the actual published work itself. It's direct investigative access to primary sources, involvement of subject experts etc. This kind of source verification is entirely case by case. If this information does end up being added to the Wikipedia article on the back of a reliable organisation picking it up it would be most appropriate to credit straight to the video documentary as source as well as the article. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 10:41, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

It doesn't help that the "documentarian in question" posts under a pseudonym ("RabitHole"), so we have no idea of their competence.

The solution to the priority question is very simple: our citation would read something like

• {{cite youtube |<author> <video>}} |cited in {{cite journal | etc}}

which justifies it against the WP:RSPYT critieria – provided that it is evident that the journal or magazine evaluated the documentary and not merely reporting that someone has posted a youtube video. Equally, if the letter has been placed on the public record, we can cite it and credit the finder, 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:17, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

@JMF Emily Zhang doesn't hide the fact that she's behind Rabbit Hole (see https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/the-rabbit-hole-of-everyday-questions-with-emily-zhang for a recent source). She won the National Academies award for science communication last year, so there is some independent verification of her competence. EDITED TO ADD: Our #1 source, the Cibois article, now has a foodnote that translates to Emily Zhang, who runs a blog on YouTube: Rabbit Hole, published a large study that proposes a name, librarian James Mosley (now deceased) as the creator of the Lorem Ipsum for Letraset. The address of the blog post is: Why is this strange text everywhere? (Lorem Ipsum). In this video, Emily Zhang talks at length with Richard McClintock, who first spotted the link to an edition of Cicero's text. Thanks to Emily Zhang for her work.--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:23, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

So if the email and its author can clearly be identified, end of problem.

But is is concerning that Cibois says "a large study that proposes a name" (my emphasis). I'm detecting a definite caution on their part and disinclination to leap in to underwrite the proposition at this stage. Wikipedia is deliberately positioned behind the curve and it would place us to close to the bleeding edge to even say "According to Emily Zhang...". Who? (Did you mean Emily Chang (journalist)? I notice that our article about her doesn't say anything about RabbitHole being her nom de plume, so that's another barrier to cross.) 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:18, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

These two Emilies do not resemble each other. —Antonissimo (talk) 02:58, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Or to put it another way, the author is not a notable person and we have no reason to believe that she is an more a subject expert than you or I - but at least we are bound by WP:NOR. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:53, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

It is perplexing that there is an argument about where on the curve a source lies that is seemingly being made without having engaged with the source at all. Secondly there is nothing saying that Wikipedia should be "behind the curve", Wikipedia is not academia, Wikipedia assesses it's sources by quality and can publish bleeding edge information as long as it is reliable. I have no idea where the idea that Wikipedia can not be on the bleeding edge of information, if anything the potential to be radically up to date is one of the defining differences of this site from traditional encyclopaedia's subject to the sources. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 10:26, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

The starting point is that youtube is generally not a reliable source unless the video shows an established subject expert talking about their own specific field of expertise. Otherwise it has self-published source red flags all over it. So the author says that she has an email from a senior executive at Letraset. Who is she that we should we believe her?

WP:Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. We wait for the consensus of experts. Please ask at the WP:Teahouse for a better explanation that I am competent to give. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:53, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

This whole line of reasoning makes no sense to me. Nobody is saying that she is an expert herself and YouTube is not a source it is a platform. Longtime science journalist who worked with large scale popular science communications publisher Veritasium goes independent and published journalistic work on Youtube. She has the same credential background as any independent journalist, the information she presents has to be assessed case by case. Calling the veracity of the email into account without any rationale is bizzare to me. I guess we could wait for "Yahoo!life Singapore" to recycle it to consider it sourced. Because Wikipedia considers Yahoo!news a reliable source. That's just citogenesis laundering. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 23:03, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Whoops that was syndicated content. The general point about evaluating sources stands though. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 23:08, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

When it is published by a reliable source with editorial oversight, then it has standing. That she has chosen to publish it independently makes it a WP:self-published source, which is not acceptable. And no, as I'm sure you are well aware, a report in Yahoo New, MSN or the Wall Street Journal that she said it is not a valid citation for the validity of her assertion. If she can't get a relevant journal to publish it then the minimum would be that an RS publishes a critical evaluation of her work and approves of it. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:18, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I mean this is reasonably best described as a documentary and nothing in the text (video) itself differentiates it from any other documentary source. The procedural issue is that it is self-published, so not backed by a publication of repute. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 10:15, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Furthermore, this kind of discovery generally does not require peer review. A substantial amount of all investigative history is produced by journalism and documentarians, not peer review academics. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 10:17, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

True, it doesn't need peer review but the obvious question is why it hasn't been published in any of the established magazines or journals of the printing or publishing industry - surely it would be of great interest to them. It fails WP:SPS, as particularly identified at WP:RSPYT.

I haven't watched it: if the author gives the basis for his assertion and that basis can be verified, then we merely have to use the same citation. If it can't be verified, then we certainly can't use it. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:40, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Antisymmetricnoise subsequently added (above) that the basis is an email that the "RabitHole" says he received from a senior manager at Letraset. So why can't we cite the email and its author? (who would have to be named of course). The person concerned may be taken to be a subject expert. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:23, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

This is a deeply confusing suggestion. Citing unpublished sources, such as personal emails, unlike the source you are protesting, is strictly prohibited on Wikipedia. Emily Zhang, the author of the RabitHole series, has published the content of a set of digital correspondences as part of a self published journalistic work (the youtube video). A video interview with Richard McClintock, an email correspondence with Dave Farey. Both of whom are authoritative individuals in various parts of the history of Lorem Ipsum. It's therefore reasonable to conclude the claims made therein can be reasonably understood to be reliable given the published sourcing. There could be some t's to cross and i's to dot but you need to provide an argument that actually evaluates the source itself. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 10:19, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it is confusing and I should not have suggested it. I misunderstood the author to be notable person ("Emily Zhang" redirects to Emily Chang (disambiguation) and I inferred that you meant Emily Chang (journalist)). It would still have been problematic and need consensus to be used, but at least the starting point would be that this is a person with a reputation to lose if not entirely verifiable.

Right now, the position it that Philippe Cibois (a subject expert of Association française pour l'information scientifique) is not yet willing to accept it, so neither should we. When he or another RS evaluates her actual evidence (not the video) and considers it valid and well founded, then we can use it. But not before. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:53, 5 June 2026 (UTC) revised to strike out "subject expert" for Cibois as he is a sociologist so his expertise is questionable but his institution has standing. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:43, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

History or "etymology" or development section

(also see the preceding talk section)

We really need to have a section explaining the genesis of Lorem Ipsum. Here are things I feel the current article is lacking:

• Lorem Ipsum was preceded as dummy text by Quousque tandem abutere. Its role in the history of typesetting is currently not mentioned at all (in that article; it is discussed at Filler text) By the way, we do connect Latin to more elaborate Q designs over at Q#Uppercase "Q", but editors have failed to provide a page reference. It would be interesting to read the actual passage(s) where Updike discusses Q (sigh, I don't want to search 677 pages for the letter "Q"...) Y
• A false origin was for a long time perpetuated even by reliable sources (if you just google it you end up with a WP:FORK-like circular reference) such as the New York Times, that Lorem Ipsum originated in the 1500s. Y
• We should not just mention the above, but also note that the origin of this mistake is with Richard McClintock, and the letter to Before & After magazine Y
• We should point out how Cicero's original text was deliberately changed to 1) make it incomprehensible (to a reader knowledgable in Latin) and 2) to redistribute the letter frequency away from common Latin letters and towards letters common in English.
• We should be able to state "according to Dave Farey, former Type Studio Manager at Letraset, at a meeting circa 1966, publicity design manager Colin Orchard mentioned that a sheet of dummy text would be useful. Letraset brought in the St Bride Printing Library, and its head librarian, James Mosley, as a consultant. Mosley considered Quousque tandem abutere to be too-well known and found another Cicero text. Y
• We do mention the Harris Rackham 1914 Loeb edition, and show the text, but we do not explicitly point out how this particular printing coincentally happens to hyphenate de-lorem exactly where the lorem ipsum text uses "lorem", and also that the full Lorem Ipsum text consists of four parts, all matching a page start exactly. likely this is the specific book and printing used by Mosley. Y
• The first computerized use of Lorem Ipsum was added by Laura Perry, then Creative Director at Aldus Corp, who added it to Aldus PageMaker version 3 out in April 1988 (cue the WikiProject that tries to add back female contributions to history...)

CapnZapp (talk) 11:19, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, worth doing, provided everything can be supported by RS citations and there is no WP:SYNTH. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:30, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your encouragement, User:JMF! Yes, that's why I posted this on talk instead of directly in the article. You know what you could do if you want to help? You could analyse the specific bullet points above: which do you consider ready to go "into production" as it were? Which ones do you see as problematic? Where do you see dangers of synthesis? Which ones do you see us not currently being able to procure RSes for? Any sources used by Emily Zhang/Rabbit Hole you feel qualify as RS (link at § We now know the origin of lorem ipsum)? Obviously, you're welcome to edit the bullet points or add to them as well. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 12:15, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

An important gotcha that has occurred to me since my first reply. Such a section would really have to reach a conclusion on what was the actual source - but for which we don't have a reliably sourced answer. To leave it hanging will mean that either we will have people repeating the claims in the youtube video without qualification or we will have a weasel worded "it has been suggested", which is just as bad. Here be dragons. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:00, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, User:JMF. However, on top of reminding users what not to do, can you pick one or more concrete proposals for additions to the article you do feel are acceptable? CapnZapp (talk) 08:20, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

They are all acceptable provided that each is supported by an RS citations. The only issue is the proposal in the previous section to cite a youtube video. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:48, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

There is no blanket ban on self-published sources or youtube videos, as RS you are going to have to be more specific to the source at hand. As far as I can tell the only piece of due diligence we could conceivably wait for here is for a major news outlet to reach out to Dave Farey to that the email is authentic. I am curious as to if they would even bother rather than just citing the video as source. Already the video clearly acts as a reliable source for the 1500s date being speculation as it contains a direct interview with the originator of the idea. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 10:53, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I added some text based on the video, with the caveat that I presented it the way we would any other interview -- it is only a source as to what the subject-matter expert said, not for any interpretation or synthesis. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:23, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

the year 1982?

Our article claims McClintock connected Lorem ipsum to Cicero's writing sometime before 1982

I cannot find any mention of that date in our sources. What is the basis of claiming he performed his research in 1981 or earlier? What makes us so sure he could not have researched consectetur in 1982 or any year before he wrote to Before & After in 1994?

CapnZapp (talk) 10:02, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

The 1982 asseerions should go. Whatever McClintock says he did and when he did it, the only thing that matters is when it was published. Google search results are polluted with copies of this article but the best I could find is Where does Lorem Iposum come from? which says

In design magazine, Before and After Magazine, a journalist [John McWade] wrote in volume 4, number 2 the following:

After telling everyone that Lorem ipsum, the nonsensical text that comes with PageMaker, only looks like Latin but actually says nothing, I heard from Richard McClintock, publication director at the Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, who had enlightening news:

Lorem ipsum is latin, slightly jumbled, the remnants of a passage from Cicero’s ‘De finibus bonorum et malorum’ 1.10.32, which begins ‘Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit…’

English translation: There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain…

De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC, is a treatise on the theory of ethics very popular in the Renaissance.

What I find remarkable is that this text has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since someone in the 1500s took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book; it has survived not only four centuries of letter-by-letter resetting but even the leap into electronic typesetting, essentially unchanged except for an occasional ‘ing’ or ‘y’ thrown in. It’s ironic that when the then-understood Latin was scrambled, it became as incomprehensible as Greek; the phrase ‘it’s Greek to me’ and ‘greeking’ have common semantic roots!

Another source gives the date of that issue as 1994 but, as it repeats the unsourced 1982 assertion, it may be a citogenesis issue. "Someone" would need to consult the archives of the magazine to verify. It is available at CreativePro archive but only to members of CreativePro. We could {{cite magazine}} using volume=4, number=2 and date=1994 but it would be far better if the quote and the date could definitely be verified. Is there a member of CreativePro in the house? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:57, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

popular culture

How about including notable references to lorem ipsum in popular culture? I nominate the lawyer character's claim that his client "Frank's detainment contravenes his right to ipsum lorem" - Deadloch season 2 episode 4. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jds13 (talk • contribs) 15:00, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose because practically every "in popular culture" section that I have ever come across consists of nothing but wp:trivia and/or WP:OR. Such as this one, which is your selection of an example of use, which not a valid citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JMF (talk • contribs) 15:27, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

beware of some sources

Right now, the article is using as a source the oregonidainitiative.org. That's some sort of financial enterprise that has no connection to the subject matter. Of course that as a rule wouldn't be an issue, but it highlights (at least to me) a very amusing problem of researching this article. Since at one point the texts that accompany lorem ipsum generators started being used as placeholders as well, some resources you can find now online right now will be those texts reproduced on other websites which are using it as placeholders, and are highly indexed in search engines. This is mostly likely a case of the aforementioned source, which afaik copies the text at lipsum.com .

I'm bringing this to try and solve the current problem (the oregonidainitiative.org article) but also to warn others, who might be researching, to try and check if this isnt what is happening.

The question here is whether to replace the current source with one at lipsum, or perhaps at loremipsum.org (both LI generators, about as seemingly unreliable both, tho the latter one seems to be more researched). Or remove the small part of the article that's relying on it. Or ideally if someone could find a more satysfying source. Saeleriela (talk) 21:00, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

I have deleted the statement and its "citation", because oregonidainitiative.org is clearly not a reliable source for typography. It is being used as a form of Honeypot (computing), a techique beloved of scammers and does the organisation concerned no credit at all if they are bona fide. Avoid.

The phenomenon you identify is called citogenesis and is the bane of our lives as contributing editors . 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:44, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

The statement that it claimed to cite was "Lorem ipsum was introduced to the digital world in the mid-1980s, when Aldus employed it in graphic and word-processing templates for its desktop publishing program PageMaker", which is really rather significant (especially as it gives a rough date) and should have a quality citation. I'm afraid loremipsum.org wouldn't make the cut for me but others may disagree? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:53, 14 July 2026 (UTC)