Yes, it’s true. During my years in Junior and Senior High School, I took four years of Latin. Have I found those years of training useful? Well, not in the direct sense. I mean I’m not running into people who speak the language as their native tongue. I’m not Catholic so I’m not using it there; besides, even if I were of that faith, the Catholic Church has pretty much abandoned Latin for most services. I’m not a lawyer – the law uses a number of Latin phrases.

Still, I do throw around some Latin words and phrases from time to time. For instance, in an earlier post today, (“Don’t Be A Mule“) I used the phrase “ad nauseam” in a sentence. That’s Latin meaning “repeating or continuing to the point of boredom.” There are other Latin words and phrases I use, too. For instance, ad hoc, bona fide, caveat emptor, circa, de facto, et cetera, per se, quid pro quo, and verbatim. I could go on but I think I’ve proven that my four years of studying Latin were not wasted!

I bet you’re wondering how my Latin studies have anything to do with computing? I’m right, aren’t I? Well, here’s the tie-in. Have you ever seen this Latin gibberish?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna.

Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus.

Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci.

What you’re seeing in bold above is Latin that, while it doesn’t make any sense, is useful for saving formatted space in something you are writing. Let’s say you’re writing your life’s story or a long note to Uncle Buddy. As you’re writing, you just can’t think of something you want to tell in the “meat” of the story but you’ve already got the ending in your head and you want to type it but leave a place where you can go back later. That’s where this Latin nonsense comes in handy.

If you use Microsoft Word, there’s an easy way to bring up filler text without having to actually type it. If you have Microsoft Word, I want you to try this now! Open Word to a blank document. Now, type the following: =lorem(X) but replace the X with the number of paragraphs you want to use. For instance, if I type =lorem(2) I get this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna.

Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus.

One little caveat… (See what I did there? I told you my four years were beneficial!) The Replace text as you type feature in Word (File > Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options > AutoCorrect tab) must be turned on for this feature to work.

Hmmm… What if you don’t use Microsoft Word but you’d like to be able to save formatted space in a document? (I sometimes do this when I’m writing my blog posts.) You can use a lorem ipsum generator like the one on this website: https://generator.lorem-ipsum.info/_latin. On this site, you can choose how many paragraphs or how many words (up to 4500) and you can generate in HTML or plain text. Why not go try it, just for fun?