Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit…

Those who studied Latin back in high school will have tough luck trying to translate this text. Those involved in graphic design, however, are probably familiar with—and terribly bored by—it. It’s not an excerpt from an epic saga, but rather pseudo-Latin meant merely to illustrate typeface characteristics and where words will sit on a page.

Richard McClinktock, a Latin scholar and director of publications at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, traces the text back to a passage from Cicero’s de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil) that reads: Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit … (from H. Rackham’s 1914 translation(Opens in a new window): “Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain…”).

The original Latin has been picked apart and scrambled so that the remnants are indecipherable, letting readers focus on design elements and not get distracted by text. Lorem ipsum(Opens in a new window) has been placeholding since the fourteenth century and even in the digital era remains essentially unaltered.

That is, with a few exceptions. As one could imagine, after 500 years, designers got a bit bored and thus unleashed their creativity. Thanks to their ingenuity—and, in some cases, cynicism—lorem ipsum now comes in dozens of dialects. An array of dummy text generators churn out filler à la hipsters, journalists, and even Samuel L. Jackson, among others. In some cases, the content goes against its purpose and is actually more interesting than the design, but we doubt you’ll complain. Here are 14 of our favorites.