The Latin text Lorem ipsum (lipsum for short) is often found in demonstrations of fonts and other places where typography and layout are on display. It often arouses curiosity as to what it means.

The simple answer is: nothing at all. It is well known that people are distracted by readable text, so when displaying a typeface, publishers use lipsum to make people focus on the typeface and not on the content. Additionally, lipsum has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters as is seen in English. This also helps to get people to not concentrate on the content.

The text is actually pied from Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum, "On the fates of the good and the evil." The original passage began: Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit ("Nobody likes pain for its own sake, or looks for it and wants to have it, just because it is pain . . .") It has had additional letters which were uncommon or lacking in Latin -- such as k, w, and z -- and nonsense words such as zzril, takimata, and gubergren added to the original passage to achieve a proper distribution or letters.

In the text that you encounter in the typesetting field, this has been pied so thoroughly that nary a drop of significance remains in any of it.

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