Policy Briefs

What is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Why do we use it?

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

Where does it come from?

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

Dermot Hodson and David Howarth (2022) ‘The European Guarantee Fund and COVID-19: Agile But in need of Greater Accountability’, Banking on Europe Policy Brief 1/2022.

 

Dermot Hodson and David Howarth (2022) ‘The European Parliament and the Recovery and Resilience Dialogue: An Early Assessment’, Banking on Europe Policy Brief 2/2022.

 

Iacopo Mugnai (2022) ‘Italy and Next Generation EU: Economic and Political Unknowns’, Banking on Europe Policy Brief 3/2022.  


Dermot Hodson (2022) ‘The EBRD and the War in Ukraine: The Long Road to Reconstruction’, Banking on Europe Policy Brief 4/2022.


Lukas Spielberger (2023) ‘Staying the course: The EIB’s reluctant COVID-19 response’ Banking on Europe Policy Brief 1/2023.


Lukas Spielberger (2023) ‘Does the EU have leverage on sustainable bond markets?’ Banking on Europe Policy Brief 2/2023. 

 

Lukas Spielberger (2023) ‘The Commission’s borrowing operations: A closer look at the new diversified funding strategy’ Banking on Europe Policy Brief 3/2023.


Iacopo Mugnai (2023) ‘The Accountability of Pan-European Borrowing: Italy and Next Generation EU’ Banking on Europe Policy Brief 4/2023.


Lukas Spielberger (2023) ‘EU Support to Ukraine is Changing the Rules of Macro-Financial Assistance’ Banking on Europe Policy Brief 5/2023. 


Lukas Spielberger and Moritz Rehm (2023) ‘How Next Generation EU Will be Paid Off’ Banking on Europe Policy Brief 6/2023. 


Lukas Spielberger (2023) ‘Should the European Investment Bank be Accountable to Financial Supervisors’ Banking on Europe Policy Brief 2023/7.


Banking on Europe (2024) ‘Banking on Europe – Holding Pan European Public Borrowers to Account’ Banking on Europe Policy Brief 2024/1.