Monday, January 26, 2009

Lorem Ipsum

Though my father was not a print shop type setter, as the son of a former book binding shop foreman, I used to work around type setters and printing presses in the summers and holidays helping dad out around the shop when I was in Jr HS and HS. I was intrigued by the reference to Marcus Tullius Cicero's original quotation, from the De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the Ends of Goods and Evils) that I ran across today:
Cicero's original text: …neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?"

H. Rackham's 1914 translation: Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain of pain itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

I had no idea that it was also used in typesetting terminology: lorem ipsum is common placeholder text used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout.

Watching HBO's ROME on Netflix, it shows Cicero to be quite an obsequious sycophantic worm, but he's got some good quotes in written recorded history.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.