Lorem Ipsum

There is a text that printers use as a placeholder when checking out how something will look when laid out on the page. It isn't English and it isn't, though it looks like it, Latin. What it is, is a mangled and distorted section of text from Cicero. It begins with the words lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

I encountered it again the other day in an odd place.

On Boxing Day in China it is traditional to present people with apples as a gift. I received half a dozen from students. Enterprising salesmen wrap the apples in cellophane, put them into nice cardboard boxes and sell them at inflated prices. The boxes come in all sorts of colours and patterns. One of mine had a picture of Santa and the words Merry Christmas in a beautiful cursive script. Below it was what looked, from a distance, like a block of English text. On closer examination it was the lorem ipsum text.

I'm used to seeing odd translations in China but this was a first. It must have been printed in China but I wasn't aware that they used that text here.