Using Lorem Ipsum
Lorem Ipsum should be very familiar for those in the design world! While it may look like a proper language, it’s actually a scrambled version of “De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum,” which itself is Latin. It makes for a great way to generate dummy text to present and demonstrate layouts with. In order to add a block of Lorem Ipsum text into your word document, type =lorem() into a document, then press enter.
Word will automatically generate some Lorem Ipsum text for you.
Why Use Lorem Ipsum?
Lorem Ipsum may look strange, but it’s widely used in the design world for a good reason. When presenting a proposed layout to a client, the designer wants them to judge how the document looks, rather than what the content says. Tricks such as copy-pasting the words “Content here” or adding random English sentences can have a subtle effect on someone reading it, despite the fact the focus is supposed to be on the layout. By using Lorem Ipsum, you can help keep the focus on the formatting rather than the content.
Using Random Word Help Text
If you type =rand() and press enter, Word will add text that talks about some of the features that Word has.
This produces a nice variety of English words that don’t get repetitive. These paragraphs each cover a different topic, so if you’d like to experiment with sections and headers, this option provides some clearly defined segments for you to work with.
Using a Single Repeated Sentence
Word also still contains support for its older rand() function which was very basic in its design. To use it, simply type =rand.old() into a document and press Enter.
The end result is the phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” repeated over and over. This is ideal if you want to do a test of every letter in your formatting to ensure your font selection is ideal.
Customising the Dummy Text
You’ll notice that each of these commands has two brackets at the end of it. We can put two variables in these brackets to better customise the dummy text that appears and make it suit the use case we’re using it for. When invoking a command you have two variables you can set: the number of total paragraphs generated and the amount of lines contained in each paragraph. To use them, simply type the numbers in the bracket separated by a comma. Enter the number of paragraphs you want first, then the number of lines in each paragraph second. For example, let’s say we want four paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum, and each paragraph to contain 3 lines of text. We type =lorem(4,3) into the document and hit Enter.
Word generates the correct amount of Lorem Ipsum based on the paragraphs and lines we asked it to make.
If you’re making dummy text for a large main document, you can use this option to generate a lot of content to fill it. If you’re tweaking the formatting for individual parts (such as in a resumé design), you can alter the amount of text shown depending on how long you feel each section should be.
Generators Outside of Word
While Word comes with its own generators, there are plenty of resources online you can use for more specific dummy text generation.
Blind Text Generator
The Blind Text Generator has a lot of options for generating dummy text. It has the typical Lorem Ipsum option but also comes with options for English prose, other languages, and a mix of pangrams. There’s even an option that dumps all letters in both cases and a selection of symbols, which is ideal for testing a font choice.
Lipsum
Lipsum is a generator dedicated to Lorem Ipsum. It contains a little history on why designers use it and provides a generator for your own use. You can customise how many paragraphs or words it generates, set them in a bullet-point list format for format testing, and even generate text at a specific file size.
Dummy Text Generator
The Dummy Text Generator is a great way of testing document layouts. You can choose between Lorem Ipsum and random English words depending on what you’d prefer. You can tell the generator to add headings and randomly bolded and italicised text, so if you’re designing a document that contains these, this is a great tool to see how they’d look in your layout.
No Longer A Dummy
If you’re looking to add dummy text to a Word document, there’s several ways to do it. Now you know how to do the quick and easy Word options as well as some more specialised and efficient variants on the Internet. Do you use dummy text a lot in your work? Let us know below!
