feugifacilisi and latin-like gibberish

[Michael Squires (michael)]

I don't know where this orginally came from, but I first saw it in 1985 using
PageMaker. My understanding is that it is supposed to approximate the visual
"density" of typical English, without actually having any meaning to catch
the reader's eye or distract them. The reason for using it is to fuss with a
layout where you want to see how everything will look visually. I've seen it
used as a standard "placeholder" to mean "I'll put something meaningful here
someday."



	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Petter Naess [SMTP:pnaess at usis.no]
	Sent:	Friday, January 09, 1998 9:01 AM
	To:	Multiple recipients of list
	Subject:	feugifacilisi and latin-like gibberish

	Can someone explain the curious - and surely unintended - occurrence
of
	Latin or bogus Latin at certain web-sites? A recurring text begins:

	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diem
nonumm=
	y
	nibh euismod tincidunt ut lacreet dolore magna aliguam erat volutpat.
Ut
	wisis enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tution ullamcorper
	suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis te
	feugifacilisi. Duis autem dolor... and so on.

	A Webferret search on the nonsense word "feugifacilisi" therein
turned up
	about 50 such sites - you can sample one at

	http://www.chinatownphx.com/technolo.htm

	I suspect this has something to do with FrontPage - when I load the
	FrontPage editor and create a new file using one of the one-column
body
	options, I find the same text! I assume they've used this meaningless
	gibberish to represent "text that goes here" without confusing people
wit=
	h
	meaning, but for me this is not helpful. I guess I must stop
attributing
	meaning to words. What really baffles me though is how this stuff
gets on
	to the web!

	Another curious example of Latin is to be found at the State
Department
	Political-Military Affairs Bureau's Mine Web Page at

	http://www.mineweb.org/html/profiles.html

	(although the *.org rather than *.gov domain arouses suspicions...)

	There the text is:

	Experieris non Dianam magis montibus quam Minervam inerare. Vale.
Ridebis=
	,
	et licet rideas. Ego ille quem nosti apros et quidem pulcherrimos
cepi.
	Ipse? inquis. Ipse; non tamen ut omnino ab inertia mea et quete
iscederem=
	=2E

	Although my Latin is rusty - hardly anyone in Norway speaks it these
days
	- this does seem to bear a closer resemblance to the real thing, at
least
	parts of it.

	I have made an effort to find some discussion of this matter on the
web,
	but nobody seems to have broached it - have any of you encountered
this
	strange phenomenon, and can you explain it?

	Best regards,


	Petter Naess
	Information Resource Center
	U.S. Information Service  (USIS)
	American Embassy
	Drammensvn.18
	0244 Oslo, Norway
	phone 22562522
	fax 22440436
	email pnaess at usis.no