The useful setting is not "how many paragraphs"
Nobody needs five paragraphs. They need to find out whether a card title wraps to three lines, whether a summary truncates, or what a heading does at 60 characters. That is a lengthquestion.
Almost every generator only offers paragraphs, so people produce a slab and delete words until it looks about right. Generating to an exact character count takes a second and gives you the answer, and it cuts mid-word because that is exactly what truncated real content does.
Lorem ipsum hides the faults it is meant to reveal
This is the awkward part, and it should be said plainly. Latin filler is uniformly medium:
- Every word is four to twelve letters, so nothing ever fails to fit.
- No numbers, no capitals in odd places, no punctuation you did not expect.
- No empty values, because there is always something to show.
- Every paragraph is roughly the same length as every other paragraph.
Real content is none of those things, and the differences are precisely what breaks a layout. A design that looks perfect full of Latin routinely falls over on a real product name, a customer with no surname, a price of nothing, or a description somebody wrote in one word.
Test the extremes, not the middle
If you cannot get real content, the useful substitutes are the edges. One very long unbroken word. Nothing at all. A single character. A string in a script that is not Latin. More filler of the same average length tells you nothing you did not already know after the first paragraph.
That is why the flavours here are what they are rather than five shades of Latin.
Very long words
German compound nouns, chemical names and bare URLs share one property: they cannot wrap. So they overflow the column instead of flowing inside it, and a card that looked fine yesterday now has text running under the next one.
When it happens, the fix is nearly always on the container rather than the content: overflow-wrap: anywhere, and sometimes min-width: 0 on a flex child, which is the one everybody forgets.
Right to left
Arabic reads the other way. Dropping it into a layout immediately exposes anything hard-coded to the left: alignment, icon position, padding written as left and right rather than start and end, and every arrow pointing the wrong way.
It only works if you set dir="rtl" on the container. Without that you are testing whether the font loads, which is not the interesting question.
Chinese
No spaces, so it wraps between characters rather than between words, and the glyphs are both wider and taller than Latin ones. A line height tuned on English usually looks cramped, and a fixed-height box that comfortably fits an English sentence frequently will not fit the same sentence translated.
Why the same settings give the same text
Because a design you sent for review should be reproducible. If every reload gives different filler, you cannot regenerate the screenshot somebody is asking about, and a visual regression test fails on text nobody cares about rather than on the change you made.
There is a button for a different draw when you want one. Everything runs on your own machine, and nothing is uploaded.
Common questions
What does lorem ipsum actually say?
It is real Latin, scrambled. The passage comes from Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC, sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33, which is a discussion of pleasure and pain. A printer in the 1500s jumbled it to make a type specimen and it has been filler ever since. It is not gibberish, it is a genuine text chopped about, which is why it has the rhythm of real writing.
Why does it let me generate an exact number of characters?
Because that is usually the real question. Nobody needs five paragraphs. They need to know whether a card title wraps to three lines at 60 characters, or where a summary field truncates. Only offering paragraphs means generating a slab and deleting words until it looks about right, which is slower and less precise.
It cut off mid-word.
On purpose, when you have chosen to measure in characters. Stopping at the nearest space would return 134 characters when you asked for 140, and the whole reason to specify a character count is to find the exact point at which something truncates. Real truncated content lands mid-word too.
Why does it warn me against using lorem ipsum?
Because it hides the faults it is supposed to reveal. Every lorem word is four to twelve letters, evenly spaced, with no capitals in odd places, no numbers and no empty values. Real content has all of those and they are what actually breaks a layout. A design that only works when it is full of Latin does not work.
What should I use instead?
Real content wherever you can get it, even rough real content. Where you cannot, test the extremes rather than the middle: the longest product name you might ever have, a customer with no surname, a price of nothing, a description of one word. Those are what break things, and lorem ipsum will never produce any of them.
What are the long words for?
Unbreakable strings. German compound nouns, chemical names and bare URLs cannot wrap, so they burst out of a column instead of flowing. If those overflow your layout, the fix is usually overflow-wrap set to anywhere on the container, not a shorter string.
What is the Arabic option for?
Testing right to left. Arabic reads the other way, so it exposes anything hard-coded to the left: text alignment, icon positions, padding written as left and right rather than start and end, and arrows pointing the wrong way. Set dir="rtl" on the container or you are only testing whether the font loads.
Why does the same setting always give me the same text?
So a screenshot can be reproduced. Random-every-time means a design you sent for review cannot be regenerated, and a visual test fails on nothing. Press "different text" when you want a new one.