How to use the lorem ipsum generator
- Choose whether you want a number of paragraphs, sentences or words, and enter the count.
- Keep Start with "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" ticked if the text should open with the familiar first sentence, or untick it for text that begins at random.
- Pick Plain text for documents and design tools, or HTML to get every paragraph wrapped in
<p>tags for a web page or template. - Press Generate new text for a fresh variation, then copy or download it.
Sentence and paragraph lengths vary randomly so the text looks like natural writing rather than a repeated block. The text is created in your browser; the counters below the output show paragraphs, sentences, words and characters.
Worked example
Two sentences, plain text, with the classic opening, produce something like:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Magna aliqua ut enim minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris.
The same request as HTML gives one paragraph element:
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.</p>
Asking for 5 words returns exactly five: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. The words after the first sentence are random, but the counts always match what you asked for.
Each generated sentence has between 6 and 15 words, and each paragraph has between 4 and 7 sentences, which roughly matches ordinary prose. Words are picked with the browser's cryptographic random number generator, so two clicks practically never give the same text.
Where lorem ipsum comes from
Lorem ipsum is scrambled Latin taken from De finibus bonorum et malorum ("On the Ends of Good and Evil"), a philosophical work by Marcus Tullius Cicero written in 45 BC. The best-known version is based on sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33, where Cicero writes about people who do not love pain for its own sake: "neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet..." The placeholder starts in the middle of the word dolorem, which is why it opens with the fragment lorem.
Words were cut, shuffled and altered over time, so the text no longer has a real meaning. It became common in the 1960s through Letraset dry-transfer sheets and later spread with desktop publishing software. Designers use it because it has a natural mix of short and long words without distracting readers with real content.
Common mistakes
- Shipping placeholder text. Search for "lorem" before launch. Dummy text on a live page looks unfinished and can be indexed by search engines.
- Designing only for short text. Real headlines and translations are often longer. Test with large counts too, and check the result with the word counter.
- Using it for accessibility tests. Screen readers read lorem ipsum as nonsense. Use realistic content when testing reading flow.
- Breaking HTML. If you paste the HTML output into a text field that escapes tags, you will see literal
<p>. Use plain text there, or remove tags with the HTML tag stripper.
Frequently asked questions
What does lorem ipsum mean?
Nothing exactly. It is a scrambled extract of Latin from Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum. The original passage talks about pain, but the placeholder version has words cut and changed so it reads as meaningless text.
Is lorem ipsum real Latin?
Partly. Many words are real Latin words from Cicero, but they are cut off, rearranged and mixed with invented forms, so the result is not grammatical Latin.
Why do designers use lorem ipsum instead of real text?
It has a realistic distribution of word lengths, so layouts look natural, while readers are not distracted by the meaning of the content.
Can I get the text as HTML?
Yes. Choose HTML in the format menu and every paragraph is wrapped in p tags, ready to paste into a web page or template.
Does the generator always produce the same text?
No. Apart from the optional classic first sentence, words and sentence lengths are chosen randomly each time, but the number of paragraphs, sentences or words always matches your setting.