Filler text

A specimen sheet of typefaces and languages, by William Caslon I, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia.

Filler text (also Placeholder text or Dummy text) is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called Greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

ASDF

ASDF is the sequence of letters that appear on the first four keys on the home row of a QWERTY or QWERTZ keyboard. They are often used as a sample or test case or as random, meaningless nonsense. It is also a common learning tool for keyboard classes, since all four keys are located on Home row.

ETAOIN SHRDLU

ETAOIN SHRDLU is the approximate order of frequency of the twelve most commonly used letters in the English language, best known as a nonsense phrase that sometimes appeared in print in the days of "hot type" publishing due to a custom of Linotype machine operators.

Lorem ipsum

"Lorem ipsum..." is one of the most common filler texts, popular with typesetters and graphic designers. Li Europan lingues is another similar example.

Now is the time for all good men

"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party" is a phrase first proposed as a typing drill by instructor Charles E. Weller. It has appeared in a number of typing books, often in the form "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."^[1]

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

A coherent, short phrase that uses every letter of the alphabet. See Pangram for more examples.

Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood

In the print version of the popular United States-based satirical newspaper The Onion, the sentence "Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood" is often repeated to fill space under a bold-text non sequitur made to appear as if the bolded "quote" has been pulled from an article nearby. This running gag has been part of The Onion for several years.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

CHARGEN

The CHARGEN (character generator) service is an internet protocol.

!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefgh
"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghi
#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghij
$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijk

See also

• Sample Text in Microsoft Word

References