What is placeholder text?

Placeholder text in design and publishing

Designers often lay out a page before anyone has written the words. Placeholder text, also called filler text or dummy text, fills the gaps so the page can be judged on its shape: line length, spacing, how a font sets and where columns break.

The most common filler is lorem ipsum, which comes from a passage in Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum, cut up until it no longer makes sense. It spread through Letraset transfer sheets in the late 1960s and is now built into Microsoft Word, Pages and many LaTeX packages.

Because nobody can read it, lorem ipsum keeps reviewers' attention on the design rather than on editing the words. Other fillers you'll see:

• "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", a sentence that uses every letter of the English alphabet. It was Word's sample text up to Word 2003.
• Repeated words such as "Content here, content here." These are easy to spot but show an unrealistic pattern of word lengths.
• Real sample copy written to roughly the right length, which is the best test once you know what the page will say.

Make some lorem ipsum here to try in your own layout:

Placeholder text in forms and apps

In a web form, the placeholder is the short hint shown in an empty field. HTML sets it with the placeholder attribute. MDN describes it as the text displayed "when the control has no value", and says it should give a brief hint about the expected type of data: a word or short phrase, not an explanation.

Two rules from MDN are worth knowing:

• A placeholder isn't a label. It disappears as soon as someone types, and screen readers don't announce it by default. Every field still needs a proper label.
• It's shown at lower contrast on purpose, so people can tell a hint from text they've entered. That lower contrast can make it hard to read for people with low vision.

Placeholder text in Word and PowerPoint

Office apps use the word in two more ways:

• Word content controls in forms and templates show a prompt such as "Click or tap here to enter text" until you type.
• PowerPoint placeholders are the dotted-line boxes on a slide layout that hold titles, body text, pictures and charts. Their prompt, like "Click to add title", only shows while the box is empty.

When real copy beats placeholder text

Lorem ipsum hides some problems. Real headlines are longer or shorter than filler, real names break lines in odd places, and a button labelled with Latin can't tell you if the wording works. Write headings, buttons and navigation for real from the start. Keep placeholder text for long body copy you haven't written yet, and search for "lorem" before anything goes live.