placeholder text

The intrepid newcomer and ominously named dekeWorld dweller, bware, was reading a post I did way back when this site was still spitting up pixel-based formula about how to customize placeholder text in InDesign. This morning, Bware wrote:

"InDesign ignores the return characters in my placeholder.txt file."

So I checked it out myself and had the same experience. All the carriage returns in my placeholder document were gone. So after trying a few useless ideas, I sent out the call for help to those keepers of the InDesign mysteries, David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion. A little while later, David emailed that he had a suggestion and because he was getting some similar queries he had put it here on their site, which should really be called:

David's suggested solution to the problem that bware and I were experiencing was to... Read more » 

You may know that InDesign has a handy feature wherein you can fill a text box with quasi-random "greeked" text if you don't have actual copy available. Simply click on any text frame, choose Type > Fill with Placeholder Text and, voila, your previously empty box fills with some kind of Latin-looking text that nicely shows your design as you intended it.

Or does it? What do we really know about that text? Why is "greeked" text apparently in Latin? And what are you really saying, entirely unbeknownst to yourself? Ignore me if you're a designer by day and Latin scholar by night, but the rest of you...read on to take control of your own placeholder text. Read more »