Explain what placeholder text is and why it is used.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

During the process of designing a Web site, a Web developer or designer is likely to use placeholder text in place of real content during the design of the layout. Placeholder text is text used solely to demonstrate the typography or layout in a document, and is also called dummy text or filler text. Although placeholder text can be any word or short phrase repeated, this may be misleading or distracting during the design phase. For instance, if a client or designer is distracted by reading this is placeholder text or a word or phrase that is repeated and used as placeholder text, then the client or designer is not as focused on the layout and design elements.

Instead, many designers use lorem ipsum text, which is Latin text that is not distracting because it looks more like natural language, as opposed to using placeholder words that are repeated over and over again. When you glance at this text, it looks like any paragraph. When you start to read it, you notice that the words are Latin. It's not distracting because it has the variety of words, characters, and punctuation that any paragraph has. But it's not content, so it also does not distract a client or designer with a readable message. Many Web sites generate lorem ipsum text, and some word-processing applications and Web design tools do as well. You can use as much of the text as you need, with short snippets for links and longer paragraphs for blocks of content. After the layout design is complete, you substitute the real content in place of the lorem ipsum text.

The use of lorem ipsum text did not begin with Web design. This technique has a long history that goes back to typesetting in the 1500s. The standard lorem ipsum text is a long quote from The Extremes of Good and Evil, written by Cicero in 45 BCE. Today there are many forms of the lorem ipsum text widely used as placeholder text.