What is placeholder text?

Placeholder text is first and foremost a stand-in for page content that is still in development. It carries no semantic meaning. That does not make it unimportant. The meaninglessness serves a clear purpose: the reader should be able to concentrate on what matters and not be distracted by copy that carries a message. Placeholder text exists in every language. Its syntax imitates the sentence structure of most European languages, which produces a realistic impression of the final product. The most famous placeholder text of all is written in Latin.

When is placeholder text used?

Until a feature goes live, web development usually runs through four phases: the concept phase, the design phase, development and the release. Copy and ideas are collected and written down as early as the concept phase. Changes are then often made right up to the final release. A webmaster should therefore only finish the final copy during or after the fourth phase. For the gap between the release of a feature and the final version of the text, placeholder text should be used. It gives the reviewer an impression of the finished feature.

How many characters does placeholder text have?

The number of characters in placeholder text is not limited. The length follows the design and above all the space that needs to be filled. With a placeholder text generator you can produce text of any length in any language. Below are a few examples in Latin and English.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet: the Latin classic

The classic placeholder text par excellence: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. The text itself has no real meaning. The word "lorem" does not exist in Latin. Historically it can no longer be traced where or by whom the text came about. Some of the word sequences can, however, be found in Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum (sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33). Cicero's work dates from 45 BC and is therefore more than 2,000 years old. Using lorem ipsum has one clear advantage: it is easy to recognise as placeholder text.

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.

Lorem ipsum in English

Nor is there anyone who loves, pursues or desires pain in itself, simply because it is pain, unless circumstances happen to arise in which toil and pain can bring them great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes strenuous physical exercise except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a person who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no unpleasant consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resulting pleasure? Nor is there anyone who loves, pursues or desires pain in itself, simply because it is pain, unless circumstances happen to arise in which toil and pain can bring them great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes strenuous physical exercise except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a person who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no unpleasant consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resulting pleasure?

Placeholder text for typography

This is a typographic placeholder text. It lets you see whether all the letters are there and what they look like. Sometimes words such as Hamburgefonts, Rafgenduks or Handgloves are used to test typefaces. Sometimes sentences that contain every letter of the alphabet - these are called pangrams. A very well-known one is: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy old dog. Foreign-language fragments are often built into typographic placeholder text as well, to test the effect in other languages. In Latin, for instance, almost every typeface looks good. Quod erat demonstrandum. Since 1975 most test texts have been missing their numerals. An important but awkward field is OpenType features. Depending on the software and its settings, built-in small caps, kerning or ligatures may not render correctly.

Placeholder text and SEO

Text made of an arbitrary arrangement of words cannot be told apart from normal copy directly by many search engines. Some webmasters therefore use placeholder text to get more traffic from search, which can affect their income from online advertising. That method has to be viewed critically.

The background: SEO keeps moving towards holistic content. Google, for instance, can recognise text with genuine quality through a range of criteria such as indirect visitor feedback. Creating complete, high-quality content is rewarded by Google with good placements more and more often.

In practice that means: placeholder text belongs in the draft, not on the published page. Anyone who takes a page live with placeholders still on it risks two things - visitors who bounce immediately and push up the bounce rate, and a page that counts as content without value in terms of OnPage optimization. Even a cleanly built URL will not help you then.