Did Cicero really write Lorem ipsum?

Josh Jones wonders who wrote the famous filler type and discovers the answer starts with Cicero, with help from a long-forgotten typesetter. Quoting Richard McClintock of Hampden-Sydney College: "It has been used as filler text since the sixteenth century when — as McClintock theorized — 'some typesetter had to make a type specimen book, to demo different fonts' and decided that 'the text should be insensible, so as not to distract from the page’s graphical features.'"

April 17, 2015

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