An Ipsum For Every Occasion

Spurred by Nick Richardson’s brief history of Lorem Ipsum, the enduring dummy text from the 16th century, Sal Robinson looks to variants in the Internet Age:

[T]here are Lorem Ipsum generators that combine dialogue from Downton Abbey and The IT Crowd and SpongeBob Squarepants; there are regional generators (the Mainer, the Newfie), and generators that mix and match language often considered to be babble anyway (the po-mo academic paper, corporate-speak,inspirational quotes). As a nearly full-time text generator myself, I don’t see one for book jacket copy, though there is an excellent old school chart for assembling your own blurbs.

These generators are pretty satisfying for people who miss Maurice Moss or have to write academic papers, and give you plenty of useful dummy text, but they don’t often come close to the original’s level of lyricism. Maybe you’re only as good as the guys you steal from? For superior nonsense, it’s best to turn to Lewis Carroll, who, when Lorem Ipsumated, produces passages like this:

Alice laughed. ‘There’s a mile high and down

in an egg, Sir,’ Alice asked, handing her hand and drank some poetry repeated thoughtfully. ‘An

uncomfortable sort of old clothes

than anything else, you know, with some time the

poor Gnat went on growing older.’

‘ONE can’t, you know, with all alive, and thirsty!’

One has the feeling that Carroll would approve.