Generate lorem ipsum placeholder text by paragraphs, sentences, words or an exact number of characters, as plain text or HTML, ready to copy into your design or CMS.
Everything is generated in your browser. Nothing is uploaded or stored.
This lorem ipsum generator gives designers, developers and content teams realistic placeholder text in the exact amount a layout needs. Besides the usual paragraphs, sentences and words, it can produce an exact number of characters, so you can fill a 160 character SMS preview or a 2,200 character caption field to the limit, and it can pad the text by 30 or 60 percent to show how a page will look once it is translated. Check the result with the word counter if your brief sets a word budget.
What is lorem ipsum?
Lorem ipsum is scrambled Latin placeholder text used to fill a layout before the real copy exists. It comes from Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum, sections 1.10.32 to 33, and spread through Letraset transfer sheets from the late 1960s. A lorem ipsum generator mixes those Latin words into new sentences.
How Does the Lorem Ipsum Generator Build the Text?
The generator draws words at random from a vocabulary of about 140 Latin words taken from the classic passage and its common variants, then shapes them into sentences and paragraphs of natural length:
Paragraph = 4 to 7 sentences (about 55 words on average)
Translation length = words per sentence × 1.3 or × 1.6
Exact characters = whole words up to the target, finished with a full stop at exactly that length
When “Start with” is set to the classic option, the first sentence is always the familiar “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.” That opening is 19 words and 123 characters long. The default text stays the same each time you open the page; press New text to shuffle it. To turn a line of it into a title case heading, run it through the case converter.
Where Does Lorem Ipsum Come From?
Lorem ipsum comes from a passage in De finibus bonorum et malorum (“On the ends of good and evil”), a work on ethics by the Roman philosopher Cicero from the 1st century BC. Words were cut, dropped and reshuffled until the text lost its meaning, which is exactly what makes it useful: readers see the shape of the copy without being distracted by what it says.
Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, linked the filler to Cicero by tracing the rare word “consectetur” sometime before 1982. He later admitted that the popular claim that printers used it in the 1500s had been a guess with no evidence. What is documented is that the version in use today comes from Letraset dry transfer sheets first published in 1966, which made it standard in design studios.
What Does Lorem Ipsum Mean in English?
Lorem ipsum has no real meaning, because “lorem” is not a Latin word. The first two words are a truncation of “dolorem ipsum”, which means “pain itself”, from a sentence saying that nobody loves or pursues pain for its own sake, though people sometimes endure toil and pain to gain a greater pleasure. The rest of the standard passage keeps real Latin words such as “dolor” (pain), “magna” (great) and “labore” (work), but the grammar is broken, so it cannot be translated as a whole.
How Much Longer Will Your Text Be After Translation?
Translated text is usually longer than the English original, and short strings grow the most. The W3C Internationalization Activity publishes these average expansion figures from IBM’s guidelines for translating from English:
| English text length | Typical translated length | Generator setting |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 10 characters | 200 to 300% | Test by hand |
| 11 to 20 characters | 180 to 200% | Test by hand |
| 21 to 30 characters | 160 to 180% | +60% |
| 31 to 50 characters | 140 to 160% | +60% |
| 51 to 70 characters | 151 to 170% | +60% |
| Over 70 characters | 130% | +30% |
This matters for UK and EU sites that publish in several languages. German, Dutch and Finnish also join words into long compounds that may not wrap: the W3C gives “Eingabeverarbeitungsfunktionen” for “Input processing features”. Test buttons, menus and cards with padded placeholder text before the translations arrive, and leave room for the longest language rather than the English one.
Worked Example: A Product Card for Dublin and Berlin
Niamh is designing product cards for a shop that sells in Ireland in English and in Germany in German. The English description field is capped at 160 characters. She sets Amount to 160, Generate to Characters (exact) and Translation length to +30%. The generator returns placeholder text of exactly 208 characters (160 × 1.3), ending in a full stop. Dropping it into the card shows that the German version would push the price below the fold on mobile, so she adds a “Read more” link before any copy is written.
Should You Leave Lorem Ipsum on a Live Website?
No. Placeholder text tells visitors nothing and makes a page look unfinished, so remove it before launch and keep staging sites out of search engines. It is also an accessibility problem: WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.1.2 (Level AA) asks that a passage in another language be marked up, because otherwise a screen reader reads the Latin with English pronunciation. If dummy text must sit in shared prototypes, choose HTML output with lang=”la” so assistive technology handles it properly. EU businesses have an extra reason to tidy up, since the European Accessibility Act has applied to new products and services, including e-commerce, since 28 June 2025.
How Do You Use the Lorem Ipsum Generator?
Choose an amount and unit
Enter how much text you need and pick paragraphs, sentences, words or an exact number of characters.
Pick the output and length
Select plain text, HTML paragraphs or an HTML list, and add 30 or 60 percent if the layout will be translated.
Check the counts
The large figure confirms what you asked for, with the total words, characters, sentences and paragraphs underneath.
Copy the text
Press Copy text and paste it into your design tool or CMS. Press New text for a different shuffle of the same length.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is lorem ipsum real Latin?
Partly. Most of the words are real Latin taken from Cicero, but the text was cut and rearranged until the grammar broke, and “lorem” itself is a fragment of “dolorem”. A Latin reader recognises words like dolor and magna but cannot read it as sentences.
How many words are in a paragraph of lorem ipsum?
There is no fixed number. This generator builds paragraphs of 4 to 7 sentences with 6 to 14 words each, which averages about 55 words. Three paragraphs come to about 165 words on average, similar to a short blog introduction.
Can I generate an exact number of characters?
Yes. Choose Characters (exact) and enter the length, for example 160 for an SMS or 280 for an X post. The text uses whole words where possible and always ends with a full stop at precisely that character count, spaces included.
Can I copy lorem ipsum as HTML?
Yes. Set Output to HTML paragraphs to wrap each paragraph in p tags, or HTML list to put each sentence in an li inside a ul. You can also add lang=”la” so screen readers pronounce the placeholder as Latin.
Is it free to use lorem ipsum in commercial work?
Yes. The text is based on a Latin work written over 2,000 years ago, so it is in the public domain, and the generated text is yours to use in any project. You do not need to credit this tool or anyone else.
What can I use instead of lorem ipsum?
Use real or draft copy as soon as you have it, because actual headings and sentences reveal problems that Latin filler hides. Lorem ipsum works best early on, for testing type, spacing and layout before the content is written.
Sources and Further Reading
- Lorem ipsum: origin and text, Wikipedia
- Text size in translation, W3C Internationalization
- Understanding Success Criterion 3.1.2: Language of Parts, W3C WAI
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Last reviewed: October 2026