Lorem ipsum is so ubiquitous because it is so versatile. Select how many paragraphs you want, copy, paste, and break the lines wherever it is convenient. Real copy doesn’t work that way. design enhancing the meaning of the content, your content is enhancing your design.
that’s why a 15th century typesetter might have scrambled a passage of Cicero; he wanted people to focus on his fonts, to imagine their own content on the pages. He wanted people to see, and to get them to see he had to keep them from reading. They will be inexorably drawn to it. Presented the wrong way, draft copy can send your design review off the rails.
So when is it okay to use lorem ipsum? First, lorem ipsum works well for staging. It’s like the props in a furniture store—filler text makes it look like someone is home. The same WordPress template might eventually be home to a fitness blog, a photography website, or the online journal of a cupcake fanatic. Lorem ipsum helps them imagine what the lived-in website might look like.
One word of caution: make sure your client knows that lorem ipsum is filler text.
You don’t want them wondering why you filled their website with a foreign language, and you certainly don’t want anyone prematurely publishing it. Of course, we’d be remiss not to include the veritable cadre of lorem ipsum knock offs featuring: