xt, as its use is merely the symptom of a worse problem to take into consideration.

You begin with a text, you sculpt information, you chisel away what's not needed, you
come to the point, make things clear, add value, you're a content person, you like
words. Design is no afterthought, far from it, but it comes in a deserved second.
Anyway, you still use Lorem Ipsum and rightly so, as it will always have a place in
the web workers toolbox, as things happen, not always the way you like it, not always
in the preferred order. Even if your less into design and more into content strategy you
may find some redeeming value with, wait for it, dummy copy, no less.

Consider this: You made all the required mock ups for commissioned layout, got all
the approvals, built a tested code base or had them built, you decided on a content
management system, got a license for it or adapted open source software for your
client's needs. Then the question arises: where's the content? Not there yet? That's not
so bad, there's dummy copy to the rescue. But worse, what if the fish doesn't fit in the
can, the foot's to big for the boot? Or to small? To short sentences, to many headings,
images too large for the proposed design, or too small, or they fit in but it looks iffy
for reasons the folks in the meeting can't quite tell right now, but they're unhappy,
somehow. A client that's unhappy for a reason is a problem, a client that's unhappy
though he or her can't quite put a finger on it is worse.

But. A big but: Lorem Ipsum is not t the root of the problem, it just shows what's
going wrong. Chances are there wasn't collaboration, communication, and
checkpoints, there wasn't a process agreed upon or specified with the granularity
required. It's content strategy gone awry right from the start. Forswearing the use of
Lorem Ipsum wouldn't have helped, won't help now. It's like saying you're a bad
designer, use less bold text, don't use italics in every other paragraph. True enough,
but that's not all that it takes to get things back on track.

There's lot of hate out there for a text that amounts to little more than garbled words in
an old language. The villagers are out there with a vengeance to get that Frankenstein,
wielding torches and pitchforks, wanting to tar and feather it at the least, running it
out of town in shame.

One of the villagers, Kristina Halvorson from Adaptive Path, holds steadfastly to the
notion that design can’t be tested without real content:

I’ve heard the argument that “lorem ipsum” is

effective in wireframing or design because it helps
people focus on the actual layout, or color scheme, or
whatever. What kills me here is that we’re talking about
creating a user experience that will (whether we like it
or not) be DRIVEN by words. The entire structure of the
page or app flow is FOR THE WORDS.
If that's what you think how bout the other way around? How can you evaluate
content without design? No typography, no colors, no layout, no styles, all those
things that convey the important signals that go beyond the mere textual, hierarchies
of information, weight, emphasis, oblique stresses, priorities, all those subtle cues that
also have visual and emotional appeal to the reader. Rigid proponents of content
strategy may shun the use of dummy copy but then designers might want to ask them
to provide style sheets with the copy decks they supply that are in tune with the design
direction they require.

Or else, an alternative route: set checkpoints, networks, processes, junctions between

content and layout. Depending on the state of affairs it may be fine to concentrate
either on design or content, reversing gears when needed.

Or maybe not. How about this: build in appropriate intersections and checkpoints
between design and content. Accept that it’s sometimes okay to focus just on the
content or just on the design.

Luke Wroblewski, currently a Product Director at Google, holds that fake data can
break down in real life:

Using dummy content or fake information in the Web design

process can result in products with unrealistic
assumptions and potentially serious design flaws. A
seemingly elegant design can quickly begin to bloat with
unexpected content or break under the weight of actual
activity. Fake data can ensure a nice looking layout but
it doesn’t reflect what a living, breathing application
must endure. Real data does.

Websites in professional use templating systems. Commercial publishing platforms

and content management systems ensure that you can show different text, different
data using the same template. When it's about controlling hundreds of articles,
product pages for web shops, or user profiles in social networks, all of them
potentially with different sizes, formats, rules for differing elements things can break,
designs agreed upon can have unintended consequences and look much different than
expected.

This is quite a problem to solve, but just doing without greeking text won't fix it.
Using test items of real content and data in designs will help, but there's no guarantee
that every oddity will be found and corrected. Do you want to be sure? Then a
prototype or beta site with real content published from the real CMS is needed—but
you’re not going that far until you go through an initial design cycle.

Lorem Ipsum actually is usefull in the design stage as it focuses our attention on
places where the content is a dynamic block coming from the CMS (unlike static
content elements that will always stay the same.) Blocks of Lorem Ipsum with a
character count range provide a obvious reminder to check and re-check that the
design and the content model match up.

Kyle Fiedler from the Design Informer feels that distracting copy is your fault:
 If the copy becomes distracting in the design then you
are doing something wrong or they are discussing copy
changes. It might be a bit annoying but you could tell
them that that discussion would be best suited for
another time. At worst the discussion is at least working
towards the final goal of your site where questions

Summing up, if the copy is diverting attention from the design it’s because it’s
not up to task.

Typographers of yore didn't come up with the concept of dummy copy because people
thought that content is inconsequential window dressing, only there to be used by
designers who can’t be bothered to read. Lorem Ipsum is needed because words
matter, a lot. Just fill up a page with draft copy about the client’s business and they
will actually read it and comment on it. They will be drawn to it, fiercely. Do it the
wrong way and draft copy can derail your design review.

Asking the client to pay no attention Lorem Ipsum isn't hard as it doesn’t make sense
in the first place, that will limit any initial interest soon enough. Try telling a client to
ignore draft copy however, and you're up to something you can't win. Whenever draft
copy comes up in a meeting confused questions about it ensue.

Summing up, really:

Lorem Ipsum is a tool that can be useful, used intentionally it may help solve some
problems. If you go about content strategy the wrong way, fix that problem.

Lorem Ipsum plugins

Office suites
1. MS Word: From 2007 onwards typing =lorem(i) or =lorem(i, j) in MS Word creates
greeking text--don't forget to hit the enter key; i and j need to be integers, where i stands
for the amount of desired paragraphs and j numbers the sentences per paragraph. j has a
default value of 3 and a maximum set to 6665. >> screenshots
2. Open Office: An extension named Magenta Lorem ipsum generator is available at
services.openoffice.org. Once installed, an icon will be shown in a toolbar below the menu
bar, with the option to insert a number of paragraphs, the maximum is set to 25. >>
screenshots