Placeholder and Copyfitting Text 

Hold your place

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh
euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim
veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea
commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse
molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto
odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. 



There's no need to adjust your browser or change your eyeglasses.
If the above paragraph appears "greek" to you -- you aren't seeing things. It's an example of
"greeked text" used by desktop publishers and others for years. It's a series of nonsense
sentences with enough real latin components thrown in just to make it confusing. It is also
referred to as "placeholder" or "dummy" text. The purpose? 



Use as placeholder text in templates. 


Use during initial page layout and font selection exercises when first starting a design project or
when planning a newsletter when you don't have the actual copy available. 


Use when creating examples of document designs for clients, students. [including Web pages] 

Use when creating type specimen sheets or examples for clients to choose from. 

You could cut-n-paste the first paragraph over and over, or download one of these versions of the
Lorem ipsum text. The one one I created is simply 3 variations of the same paragraph repeated
over and over. Right click (PC) or click/hold (Mac) on the link then save the plain text file to your
hard drive. Or click on the link and choose "Save" in your browser. 

[lorem.txt from About.com Desktop Publishing] 

Note: Because the file was saved with no line breaks, in your browser each paragraph may appear
as one long sentence scrolling off to the right forever and ever. In your text editor turn on "word wrap"
to read the plain text file. 


[lorem.txt from Digital Design] 


Fit it all in

Pleff lorem monaq morel plaff lerom baple merol pliff ipsum ponaq mipsu ploff pimsu caple
supim pluff sumip qonaq issum daple ussum ronaq ossom fap25 abcde tonaq fghij gaple klmno
vonaq pqrst haple uvwxy nonaq zzzz. Laple pleff lorem monaq morel plaff sumip qonaq issum daple
ussum ponaq gaple klm50 lore. 


The paragraph above is an example of text used for copyfitting and type specification purposes.

The numbers in the text correspond to the word count. If you want to create your own text file it is
simply a series of 5-letter nonsense words. Every 25th word is numbered.

Use it to: 

Determine the approximate amount of copy in your chosen font that will fit in your newsletter
or other publication. 

Determine the most appropriate layout and font for publication based on the article length
you've been told to expect. 

Create samples in various fonts to show how much space the different typefaces
(or different sizes of the same type) will occupy in a publication. 

Create samples in various layouts (column widths, etc.) to see which format best suits the
amount of copy your publication will have. 


If you have PageMaker 5 or. 6.5 then you already have a version of the copyfitting text that you can use. 
Or, download this copyfitting text file containing 1000 words (including some puncuation), no paragraph 
breaks. Right click (PC) or click/hold (Mac) on the link then save the plain text file to your hard drive. Or 
click on the link and choose "Save" in your browser. 


[copyfit.txt from About.com Desktop Publishing]

Note: Because the file was saved with no paragraph or line breaks,
in your browser it may appear as one long sentence scrolling off to the right forever and ever.
In your text editor turn on "word wrap" to read the plain text file. 


To use either of these files, cut and paste, import, or place the text in your document and
apply your desired font styles and other formatting options. For templates
(or sample documents to show clients), simply save the file. To use a template, replace the
dummy text with your own text. For copyfitting purposes, the amount of the copyfit.txt that
will fit in your publication gives you an approximation of how much text your publication will hold
using the specified formatting options. Use it for planning purposes.