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Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language.
Today, we're going to talk about further versus farther, and then we're going to look at the use and history of lorem ipsum text.
Looking at the difference between further and farther has been one of the top reasons people people come to my website for almost 20 years.
So today, I'll try to help you with this continuing conundrum.
The quick and dirty tip for people using American English is to use farther for physical distance and further for metaphorical or figurative distance.
The Merriam -Webster Dictionary of English Usage says it was 1906 when the first usage guide called on writers to make this distinction between the two words.
And it's easy to remember because farther has the word far in it, and far obviously relates to physical distance.
For example, imagine Squiggly and Aardvark are in the Starship Enterprise, flying to a galaxy far, far away.
But Squiggly gets bored and starts mercilessly bugging Aardvark.
How much farther, he keeps asking in despair.
Squiggly used farther because he was asking about physical distance.
Now, if Aardvark is frustrated with Squiggly, which he surely will, he could respond, if you complain further, I'm going to ask the captain to give you a job.
Aardvark used further because there isn't a strong sense of distance.
The meaning here is more metaphorical.
It's like more or anymore, as in, if you complain anymore, I'll get you a job.
And he definitely isn't talking about physical distance.
distance. Sometimes, the quick and dirty tip doesn't work because it's hard to decide whether you're talking about physical distance.
For example, a listener named Lisa asked about the sentence, I'm further along in my book than you are in yours.
You could think of it as a physical distance through the pages and use farther, or as a figurative distance through the story and use further.
And what if you stopped someone in the middle of a sentence to interject something?
Do you say, before we go any further, or before we go any farther?
Well, there's no good answer, but the good news is that in ambiguous cases, it doesn't matter which word you choose.
Although American writers often try to stick with the distinction between further and farther, references such as the British Oxford English Dictionary and Fowler's Modern English Usage and the American Chicago Manual of Style, say that in most cases, it's fine to use further and farther interchangeably when there's some suggestion of physical or metaphorical distance, especially when the distinction isn't clear.
People have been using them interchangeably for hundreds of years.
And today in British English, even for physical distance, people use both further or farther.
It's important to remember, though, that farther does have a tie to physical distance and can't be used to mean moreover or in addition.
We're nearly out of fuel.
Further, there's an asteroid belt ahead.
You can't use farther there.
Furthermore is an option too.
Like further, it also means moreover or in addition.
As in, furthermore, I hope you locked the door when we left. So the quick and dirty tip is that farther relates to physical distance and further relates to figurative distance, but it's not a universally followed rule.
And if you can't decide which one to use, you're probably safer using further because farther has some restrictions.
Finally, if you're interested in the history of the words, further originally referred to physical distance and is the much older word, going back to Old English, whereas farther only came about as a variant in the 1300s.
This next piece was written by Jem Norina.
You might be surprised to learn Latin remains one of the most common languages used today among print and web designers.
At least it is initially.
The Latin -sounding phrase lorem ipsum is the shorthand term for the fill text designers use throughout the world to create a distraction -free visual landscape.
Fill text is is also known as fictitious, blind, or placeholder text, but it's most commonly referred to as just dummy text, which is most likely the term you've heard before.
Fill text helps someone who's reviewing a design to focus on the structure, typography, and layout of the document without getting distracted by the content, and also lets designers move a project forward without having to wait for the copy from a client.
Lorem Ipsum has been standard fill text in the printing and and design industry since the 16th century, and it's been referred to as the most famous fake text in the world.
Its roots can be traced back to acclaimed Italian printer Aldus Minucius, who devoted most of his life to publishing rare texts.
While he didn't invent Lorem Ipsum himself, according to Lipsum Hub, his creative use of fill text to create sample typefaces and printing layouts over time, quote, became the go -to placeholder text in design and development, and its usage spread across various industries, unquote.
Composed mostly of Latin, more on this in a minute, at first appearances, lorem ipsum seems pointless, but that's the point.
Sure, you could use random gibberish as filler text, but by substituting lorem ipsum for legible text, designers are less likely to be distracted by real words.
The customized filler is also designed to have a similar word and sentence structure to English.
As such, designers can preview how the final copy will look next to the design elements.
It's a wonderful example of form over function.
So where did lorem ipsum come from?
Well, in 1982, Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar at Hampton Sydney College in Virginia, discovered the name Lorem Ipsum is derived from a passage attributed to the well -known Roman orator, politician, and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero.
The passage originates in Cicero's treatise On the Ends of Good and Evil, on the theory of ethics, written in 45 BC.
By looking up the word consecutitor, one of the the more obscure Latin words Cicero uses in the passage, McClintock then sleuthed through mentions of the word in classical literature until he made the connection.
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Cicero's writing contains the Latin words, And this is the origin of how lorem ipsum was coined.
But notice it's de lorem, which means pain, not lorem, which actually has no meaning at all.
Lorem ipsum is not only incomplete text, but also, as mentioned earlier, rather funny because it contains sporadic fake Latin words.
Think of it like a book written in a foreign language, but also with missing pages.
Not everyone finds lorem ipsum funny, of course.
One comment I found online states, quote, In short, lorem ipsum is not intended to be translated, so don't be fooled by anyone who claims to know what it means.
And while the use of lorem ipsum dates back to the 1500s, its popularity in typesetting and design truly only took off during the 1960s.
That happened with the release of letraset sheets that contained Latin -based placeholding passages.
Remember those sheets?
They had pre -printed letters, numbers, and symbols that transferred the image when rubbed onto a surface like paper.
Letraset sheets were easy to use and affordable.
Professional and amateur graphic designers, architects, and artists used them extensively up until the 1980s.
They were basically an alternative to traditional typesetting until the advent of computer desktop publishing, which made things so much easier.
And on a side note, if you're a collector, word has it you can still find Letraset sheets on eBay.
Let's now turn to some pitfalls of using lorem ipsum.
Accidentally publishing works with Lorem Ipsum intact as opposed to the real copy does occur, much like typos, although certainly not as frequently.
There's even a user on X whose feed is dedicated entirely to Lorem Ipsum Fails.
Not surprisingly, it also happens to be their username, Lorem Ipsum Fails.
One word. It all sounds funny, so long as it's not your project.
Accidents aside, this printing faux pas has also occasionally been used intentionally.
intentionally. John Tollett, an author, designer, and artist who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has been using lorem ipsum in his design work since the 1970s.
He shared this story with me.
While working in a small ad agency in Dallas, one of our clients was a distributor -retailer for things like TVs and washing machines.
They would run junky little ads that designers hate, A medium -sized newspaper ad filled with lots of TVs, a brief description in small type and a big bold price.
My assistant had the job of pasting up these ads and he hated doing it, so he would sometimes replace the descriptive copy with lorem ipsum just to prove no one ever reads those ads.
He was right. When he told me what he was doing, I was surprised.
I hadn't noticed and the client never mentioned it.
In this case, it's pretty obvious the focus, as intended, was kept on the design, not the ad copy.
And that's the sole purpose of Lorem Ipsum.
Just be warned, recreating such a stunt, whether to prove a point or cause a giggle, will most likely be frowned upon by the boss.
So who makes Lorem Ipsum?
Well, despite Lorem Ipsum being a hodgepodge of garbled and an authentic Latin, whose main purpose is essentially to be ignored, someone or something has to make it.
Today, we thankfully have accessible, easy -to -use Lorem Ipsum text generators, and they're pretty darn good at turning legible prose into placeholding text.
Most word processing and design software has this feature built in.
For example, Adobe InDesign has a fill -with -placeholder -text command under the type menu.
With a single click, you'll have all the lorem ipsum you could ask for.
Another option to manifest this gobbledygook is to visit one of dozens of websites that generate free placeholding text.
For example, loremipsum .com, spelled with a Z instead of an S, allows you to paste your prose, poetry, song lyrics, whatever you want, into a text box.
Then it instantly transforms the text into lorem ipsum.
Additionally, you can customize your output by selecting from different lorem ipsum passages.
Also, you can specify the number of paragraphs, including length, and add text formatting such as bold and italic, headers, lists, and even links.
Of course, if you prefer non -Latin text, try using dummytextgenerator .com.
You can choose between English and Latin.
And now for a more creative approach, consider websites that cleverly customize your text, like CupcakeIpsum .com.
This text generator is undeniably sweet.
It uses delicious baking -themed text -holding words.
So instead of boring old lorem ipsum, your text will wet folks' appetites with copy like this.
Cupcake Ipsum Dolor Sit Amit Gingerbread.
bread. Muffin brownie caramels, sweet roll caramels, biscuit brownie.
It makes me hungry just thinking about it.
Now, if that's too sweet for your taste, yet you still seek an edge, zombieipsum .com bills itself as, quote, a macabre feast of fearful filler, unquote.
This text generator transforms your text into something that's frightfully effective, like this.
Admittedly, fear -inducing text may not be for everyday use.
I'm afraid of it trying to pronounce it.
Maybe wait until it's closer to Halloween before trying it out.
To wrap up, remember, the biggest takeaway about lorem ipsum is that it's meaningless by design.
Yet, yet it has an invaluable purpose.
And even though we call Latin a dead language, it's alive and well.
You might say it's holding its place for future use.
That segment was written by Jim Norena, MFA, who's been writing and editing for more than 35 years.
He's the founder and principal editor at typosuction .com, an independent editing and writing service.
He taught grammar and copy editing at Media Alliance and served as events coordinator for Bay Area Editors Forum.
Find him on LinkedIn for his complete work history and highlighted projects.
Finally, I have a familex from Linda, a longtime Grammarpalusian.
Hi, Grammar Girl. This is Grammarpalusian Linda in Iowa with a couple of familex that involve my mom.
For decades, mom always drank her coffee super, super hot.
She didn't think it was fit to drink if it wasn't just fresh out of the pot, practically boiling and nobody else in our family could drink it that hot.
We didn't want to come near it.
Well, her name is Lucille, but she's almost always gone by Blondie.
And somewhere along the way, somebody said the coffee was Blondie hot.
And so now if anything is too hot to consume, we just call it Blondie hot and everybody knows what you mean.
I have another other family that also involves my mom.
And several years ago, she put a lamp that she wasn't using in the closet just to store it.
And then a few months later, she decided she wanted to use the lamp and she went to get it out.
Well, it wasn't in the closet and she's hunted everywhere and family members and friends have hunted through closets and everything.
And this lamp is nowhere to be found.
And even at 98, she lives alone.
So there's nobody that would have gone into the a closet and move the lamp.
So if we lose something, we just say it's gone with mom's lamp.
It's a place of no return.
Thanks, Grammar Girl.
Enjoy the podcast. Thanks, Linda.
I love both of those.
And thanks for being a Grammarpalusian.
If you want to become a Grammarpalusian and supporter and get ad -free podcasts, bonus episodes, and fun text messages from me twice a week, visit quickanddirtytips .com slash bonus to find out how.
It's in the show notes.
notes. Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Morgan Christensen in advertising, Nat Hoops in marketing, Holly Hutchings, director of podcasts, and Dan Feierabend in audio, who loves thrifting a little too much and recently bought 25 WWE DVDs.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip -a -day book, The Grammar Daily.
That's all. Thanks for listening.
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