Origin: Contrary to popular belief, it is not random text. It is a scrambled and corrupted version of a 1st-century BC text by the Roman philosopher Cicero, specifically from his treatise “De finibus bonorum et malorum” (On the Ends of Good and Evil). [1, 2]
Why it’s used: Because the Latin words do not make sense in English, it prevents the reader from getting distracted by the actual meaning of the words, allowing them to evaluate only the visual presentation (the “typography”) of a page. [1, 2]
Popularity: It became the industry standard in the 1960s when dry-transfer lettering company Letraset included it on their sheets. In the 1980s, it was popularized digitally by Aldus PageMaker (an early desktop publishing software). [1, 2]