Hi Mark,

Lorem Ipsum does have it’s uses in initial conceptual work. However, I find that you can’t just directly copy and paste this text and use it as you’ll find extremely long words and comma’s a plenty. (Which in all intense purposes doesn’t look like realistic copy).

When I use Lorem Ipsum I find myself doing a find and replace in Quark and deleting all the comma’s. I also find that the line lengths look strange so feel forced to split words eg ‘consectetuer’.

Maybe I sound a bit anally rententive but it does make a difference?

Perhaps someone could develop another version of Lorem Ipsium which looked actual copy?

It should be every designers standard policy not to work with any client who doesn’t undertstand Lorem Ispum as place holder text? unless thy have lots of money :)

I’ve had exactly that happen.

I once presented a series of designs to a legal firm who kept hold of the boards to allow the partners to have a look over them in their own time.

I got a snotty letter back from one of the partners who had spent the evening translating the lorem ipsum and wanted to point out that I’d used some gramatically incorrect latin and that if I were going to use latin I should at least make it accurate.

Painful…

I agree mark. I have been to the basecamp seminar so I know a little bit about the context their coming from. 1) They don’t do client work anymore, and 2) All they do (mostly) is work on their own application products.

I think he is referring to when you have a prototype application, which is relatively low in large amounts of text, and text is all auxilary. For the REST of us who create a variety of design work in a variety of situations with variety of clients...we need the ipsum! :)

I am currently working on a project where we created an entire HTML prototype of the site in mostly Lorem Ipsum before any design was done. The client wanted to use the prototype to hash out the messaging of each page (slogans, themes, ect) and have the copywriter writer fill-in copy. It was fantastic because it made sure the final text was concise, and kept to a minimum. (copywriters tended to want to writea lot...go figure :) )

I have no problem keeping my lipsum generator around, but I do get their point when it comes to using real data in forms and web applications.

Cheers.

I particularly am bored with Lorem Ipsum and just use an alternate dummy text generator. And it’s fun.

The alternative generator is clever, but remember that Lorem Ipsum is designed to simulate real copy, with varying word lengths and combinations. I would hate to compose body with this as a dummy:

<quote>Thunder, thunder, thundercats, Ho! Thundercats are on the move, Thundercats are loose. Feel the magic, hear the roar, Thundercats are loose. Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thundercats!</quote>

blast, those aren’t the real tags...forgive, for I design print.