Lorem Ipsum Generator

How to use the generator

1. Pick a unit in Generate: Paragraphs, Sentences, Words or Characters (up to).
2. Type a number in How many (1 to 100,000). The text updates as soon as you change it.
3. Leave Start with “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…” ticked if you want the familiar opening, or untick it for text that starts at a random word.
4. For web pages, tick Wrap paragraphs in <p> tags (paragraphs only).
5. Click Copy or Download .txt. Click Generate new text for a different variation with the same settings.

The line under the result shows the word and character count of what you generated, so you can check it against a layout before you copy it. The text is generated in your browser; nothing is sent to a server.

What each option produces

All four units draw from the same vocabulary: the 63 different words of the classic lorem ipsum paragraph (lorem, ipsum, dolor, sit, amet, consectetur, adipiscing, elit…), picked at random. The same word never appears twice in a row.

With the opening option ticked, the first sentence is always Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. (56 characters, 8 words). In Words mode the opening is the first five words, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, so asking for 3 words gives Lorem ipsum dolor. Without the option, the first word is random.

The averages above come from generating 6,000 paragraphs with the tool and counting them with the word counter. Your own result will vary around them because sentence and paragraph lengths are random.

Examples

These were made with the tool’s own code. Your text will be different, because the words are random, but the shape is the same.

Two paragraphs with the <p> option:

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Est fugiat commodo exercitation. Et duis nulla dolore do sint commodo incididunt quis aliqua.</p>
<p>Et qui incididunt do, aliqua duis excepteur amet deserunt duis voluptate cillum id voluptate mollit proident. Ullamco ipsum consectetur sint quis ullamco aliquip anim. Ad veniam sed deserunt ad tempor voluptate minim dolor eu mollit duis. Deserunt elit consequat velit officia id proident in id duis non lorem.</p>

Generating by character count

Characters (up to) is for fields and boxes with a hard limit: a meta description, a product card, an SMS preview, a database column. The rules:

• Every character counts: letters, spaces, commas and periods. A limit of 160 can give 160 characters or slightly fewer.
• Words are never cut in half. The tool builds more text than you need, cuts it at the limit and then goes back to the last space, so the result can be shorter than the limit by up to the length of one word plus its space. In 2,000 test runs at a limit of 160, results ranged from 148 to 160 characters.
• A period is added at the end when there is room, so the last sentence may be shorter than usual (for example …quis aliqua. Et qui.). A trailing comma is removed.
• Very small limits still give a word. If the first word does not fit (with the opening on, below 5 characters), the tool picks the longest vocabulary word that fits instead: 1 gives A, 2 Do, 3 Sit, 4 Amet.

To fill a field to an exact length, generate a little more than you need and trim it, then confirm the length with the character counter.

Planning text length

Placeholder text is most useful when it is about as long as the real copy will be. A headline is a few words, a card description one or two sentences, a blog post many paragraphs. Use these averages from the generator to pick a unit:

Lorem ipsum words are longer than average English words (about 6.7 characters per word including the following space or punctuation), so 100 words of lorem ipsum take about 650 characters. When the final copy will be English, a layout filled by word count can look slightly fuller than the real text will.

When people use placeholder text

• Web and app mockups: filling cards, columns and modals before the copy is written, so the design can be reviewed without readers getting caught up in the wording.
• Testing templates and themes: checking how a CMS template handles one short paragraph versus fifty long ones. The <p> option gives HTML you can paste straight into a page or a test fixture.
• Database and form testing: putting text of a known length into a field to see where it overflows or gets cut. Use Characters (up to) for that.
• Print layouts: seeing how a brochure or magazine page flows before the articles arrive.

Lorem ipsum works because it looks like text without being readable: the Latin-looking words have a natural mix of short and long words but no meaning to distract a reviewer. For a quick list of repeated test lines instead, the text repeater is simpler.

Before publishing, search the page or the whole site for “lorem” and “ipsum”. Placeholder text that slips into a live page is easy to miss in a review and looks unfinished to visitors.

Where lorem ipsum comes from

The text is a scrambled passage from Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Ends of Good and Evil), written in 45 BC, sections 1.10.32-33. The original reads neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit…; dolorem ipsum means “pain itself”. Lorem is the end of dolorem with the first syllable missing, and many other words were shortened, dropped or added, so the result is not real Latin.

Latin scholar Richard McClintock traced the source in 1994 by looking up the rare word consectetur. The version used today spread through Letraset transfer sheets in the 1960s and later through word processors and publishing software. The often repeated claim that printers used it in the 1500s has no evidence behind it. The lorem ipsum guide goes into more detail.

Questions