Gordon Woolf's Blog

Nonsense outlasts sense

If you want to insert some dummy text in a Word document, start a new paragraph, type =lorem() and hit Enter.

This will add three paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum characters in your document but if you want more text, use the formula =lorem(m,n) where m is the number of paragraphs and n the number of lines that should be included in each of these paragraph. Be warned it is not very accurate.

In OpenOffice type dt and press the F3 function key. Less control, in that you cannot vary the lengths or specify para numbers, but you can repeat as needed.

There are dummy text plugins for either program which give more control and many layout programs
have an option to "fill with placeholder text".

But you may wonder about the name Lorem Ipsum.

Those are the first words of what, supposedly, is some text set in the earliest days of movable type. The story goes that it got shoved together after it fell on the floor and was thereafter used to fill space until the actual typesetting was ready.

It has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years, which is more than can be said for any language, so nonsense has outlasted sense.

What words are bad?

I've long used opportunities to point to the diminuation of language by too much "bad language" and have quoted before the following true tale which makes the point: I overheard several teenagers talking. One was upset at what had happened at a party in the previous day or so. Apparently his girlfriend had been at the party and his report on how she had got friendly with someone else included the f***ing word multiple times in every phrase. Until he reached the point where he had opened the door of a bedroom and there was his friend and someone else. He needed to say what they were doing, but he was lost for words: "They were... er..... er.... er.... ... having intercourse". Somehow he'd lost the real word because it no longer had the meaning he wanted.