Do you like Cheese Whiz? Spray tan? Fake eyelashes?

That's what is Lorem Ipsum to many—it rubs

them the wrong way, all the way. It's unreal, uncanny, makes you wonder if something is wrong, it
seems to seek your attention for all the wrong reasons. Usually, we prefer the real thing, wine
without sulfur based preservatives, real butter, not margarine, and so we'd like our layouts and
designs to be filled with real words, with thoughts that count, information that has value.

The toppings you may chose for that TV dinner pizza slice when you forgot to shop for foods, the
paint you may slap on your face to impress the new boss is your business. But what about your
daily bread? Design comps, layouts, wireframes—will your clients accept that you go about
things the facile way? Authorities in our business will tell in no uncertain terms that Lorem
Ipsum is that huge, huge no no to forswear forever. Not so fast, I'd say, there are some
redeeming factors in favor of greeking text, as its use is merely the symptom of a worse
problem to take into consideration.

You begin with a text, you sculpt information, you chisel away what's not needed, you come to
the point, make things clear, add value, you're a content person, you like words. Design is no
afterthought, far from it, but it comes in a deserved second. Anyway, you still use Lorem Ipsum
and rightly so, as it will always have a place in the web workers toolbox, as things happen, not
always the way you like it, not always in the preferred order. Even if your less into design and
more into content strategy you may find some redeeming value with, wait for it, dummy copy,
no less.

Consider this: You made all the required mock ups for commissioned layout, got all the
approvals, built a tested code base or had them built, you decided on a content management
system, got a license for it or adapted open source software for your client's needs. Then the
question arises: where's the content? Not there yet? That's not so bad, there's dummy copy to
the rescue. But worse, what if the fish doesn't fit in the can, the foot's to big for the boot? Or to
small? To short sentences, to many headings, images too large for the proposed design, or too
small, or they fit in but it looks iffy for reasons the folks in the meeting can't quite tell right now,
but they're unhappy, somehow. A client that's unhappy for a reason is a problem, a client that's
unhappy though he or her can't quite put a finger on it is worse.

But. A big but: Lorem Ipsum is not t the root of the problem, it just shows what's going wrong.
Chances are there wasn't collaboration, communication, and checkpoints, there wasn't a process
agreed upon or specified with the granularity required. It's content strategy gone awry right
from the start. Forswearing the use of Lorem Ipsum wouldn't have helped, won't help now. It's
like saying you're a bad designer, use less bold text, don't use italics in every other paragraph.
True enough, but that's not all that it takes to get things back on track.

So Lorem Ipsum is bad (not necessarily)

There's lot of hate out there for a text that amounts to little more than garbled words in an old
language. The villagers are out there with a vengeance to get that Frankenstein, wielding
torches and pitchforks, wanting to tar and feather it at the least, running it out of town in
shame.

One of the villagers, Kristina Halvorson from Adaptive Path, holds steadfastly to the notion that
design can’t be tested without real content:

I’ve heard the argument that “lorem ipsum” is effective in wireframing or design because it helps
people focus on the actual layout, or color scheme, or whatever. What kills me here is that we’re
talking about creating a user experience that will (whether we like it or not) be DRIVEN by words.
The entire structure of the page or app flow is FOR THE WORDS.

If that's what you think how bout the other way around? How can you evaluate content without
design? No typography, no colors, no layout, no styles, all those things that convey the
important signals that go beyond the mere textual, hierarchies of information, weight, emphasis,
oblique stresses, priorities, all those subtle cues that also have visual and emotional appeal to
the reader. Rigid proponents of content strategy may shun the use of dummy copy but then
designers might want to ask them to provide style sheets with the copy decks they supply that
are in tune with the design direction they require.
 Or else, an alternative route: set checkpoints, networks, processes, junctions between content
and layout. Depending on the state of affairs it may be fine to concentrate either on design or
content, reversing gears when needed.

Or maybe not. How about this: build in appropriate intersections and checkpoints between
design and content. Accept that it’s sometimes okay to focus just on the content or just on the
design.

Luke Wroblewski, currently a Product Director at Google, holds that fake data can break down in
real life:

Using dummy content or fake information in the Web design process can result in products with
unrealistic assumptions and potentially serious design flaws. A seemingly elegant design can
quickly begin to bloat with unexpected content or break under the weight of actual activity. Fake
data can ensure a nice looking layout but it doesn’t reflect what a living, breathing application must
endure. Real data does.

Websites in professional use templating systems. Commercial publishing platforms and content
management systems ensure that you can show different text, different data using the same
template. When it's about controlling hundreds of articles, product pages for web shops, or user
profiles in social networks, all of them potentially with different sizes, formats, rules for differing
elements things can break, designs agreed upon can have unintended consequences and look
much different than expected.

This is quite a problem to solve, but just doing without greeking text won't fix it. Using test
items of real content and data in designs will help, but there's no guarantee that every oddity
will be found and corrected. Do you want to be sure? Then a prototype or beta site with real
content published from the real CMS is needed—but you’re not going that far until you go
through an initial design cycle.

Lorem Ipsum actually is usefull in the design stage as it focuses our attention on places where
the content is a dynamic block coming from the CMS (unlike static content elements that will
always stay the same.) Blocks of Lorem Ipsum with a character count range provide a obvious
reminder to check and re-check that the design and the content model match up.

Kyle Fiedler from the Design Informer feels that distracting copy is your fault:

If the copy becomes distracting in the design then you are doing something wrong or they are
discussing copy changes. It might be a bit annoying but you could tell them that that discussion
would be best suited for another time. At worst the discussion is at least working towards the final
goal of your site where questions about lorem ipsum don’t.