Issue 259 October 9, 2008
Always use dummy type when you don’t have live text. Always.
Never copy text from another story as a template or placeholder. Never.
We apologize for repeating ourselves, but we can’t state this too strongly. Twice in recent months we’ve seen the wrong copy make it into print.
In one case, someone copied a layout from a previous issue, and one of the captions was never updated. The caption that ran made grammatical sense, and everything was spelled correctly, but it bore no relation to the photos on the page.
In the other case, someone copied a budget breakdown from another story in the same issue, and the proper numbers were never input. The values added up just fine, but they weren’t accurate prices for anything in that story.
The bottom line is that real text can slip through too easily. We simply can’t use it.
You have two choices for creating dummy copy:
• Type nonsense—random letters or a combination of x’s and y’s.
• Use lorem ipsum type. In InDesign, go to the Type menu and select Fill with Placeholder Text. (InDesign will give you just enough type to fill your text box. You won’t get any overset text.)
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