Lorem ipsum has been the default placeholder text since the 1960s. It serves its purpose -- filling space so you can evaluate layout without being distracted by content. But there are scenarios where lorem ipsum actively hurts your work.
The problem with lorem ipsum
It hides content-driven layout issues. Lorem ipsum has a consistent word length distribution. Real content does not. If your design works with lorem ipsum but breaks when someone enters a title with 15 words or a description with 3 words, you have a bug that lorem ipsum hid from you.
It gives a false sense of completeness. Stakeholders see a page full of Latin-looking text and think the design is further along than it is. Real content forces real design decisions.
It does not test localization. German words are famously long. Japanese has no spaces between words. Arabic reads right to left. Lorem ipsum behaves like English-length words in a left-to-right layout, testing only one scenario.
It does not help with readability testing. You cannot evaluate font size, line height, and measure (line length) with text you cannot read. Your eyes skip over lorem ipsum rather than tracking it the way a reader would track real content.
What to use instead
Real content first. If the content exists, use it. Design with real headlines, real body copy, real user names. This is the Content-First Design approach, and it produces better layouts because the design adapts to reality rather than reality adapting to the design.
Realistic generated text. When real content is not available, generate text that matches the expected content profile. If the field is a product description, generate text with the typical word count, sentence structure, and vocabulary of product descriptions. If it is a user bio, generate text that reads like a bio.
Structured placeholders. For forms, use realistic fake data rather than lorem ipsum. Name fields should have names. Email fields should have emails. Phone fields should have phone numbers. This helps identify issues with field widths and input validation.
Controlling text properties
A useful text generator lets you control specific properties:
Length. Specify word count, sentence count, or paragraph count. "Give me 3 paragraphs of 4-5 sentences each" is far more useful than "give me some text."
Vocabulary level. Technical content uses different vocabulary than marketing copy. A placeholder for a medical journal should have longer, more complex words than a placeholder for a children's website.
Sentence structure. Short, punchy sentences for ad copy. Long, complex sentences for academic content. The sentence length distribution affects how text flows in your layout.
Language patterns. English, Spanish, German, and other languages have different character frequencies, word lengths, and line-break patterns. Generating text that mimics these patterns catches localization layout issues early.
The developer use case
Beyond design, generated text is useful in development for:
Testing text overflow. How does your UI handle a 200-character name? A URL with 500 characters? A paragraph with no spaces (common in URLs and code blocks)? Generating edge-case text exposes these issues.
Seeding test databases. Filling a development database with realistic data requires generating text at scale. Names, addresses, descriptions, and comments that look plausible help developers spot issues during development that would otherwise surface only in production.
Performance testing. How does your text rendering perform with 10,000 words in a single block? Does your search index handle paragraphs with unusual character distributions?
I built a text generator at zovo.one/free-tools/text-generator that generates text with configurable length, structure, and style. It goes beyond lorem ipsum to produce text that actually tests your layouts and systems the way real content will.
I'm Michael Lip. I build free developer tools at zovo.one. 500+ tools, all private, all free.
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