April 22, 2005
MarkBernstein.org
 

Greeking considered harmful

Jim Heid points out that using fake text (such as the graphic design favorite Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet) can be dangerous, since people tend to overlook it and, sooner or later, it gets published.

A Fortiori: Never, ever, write your own jokes as fake text. Those fake headlines might amuse you for a moment, but you're not going to be happy when someone published them accidentally. Especially because the butt of the joke is bound to find them right away.

For example, right now there's Lorem Ipsum in the Competitions sidebar of the Journal of Architecture and Computation.

And here's the useful FAQ page about the Arapaho and Roosevent National Forests.

I bet Clan McCord's bylaws shouldn't really be dolor sit amet.

Scoble suggests always using xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx. That's easier to pick out, true -- which makes it less effective for greeking.

Nothing beats having a fresh pair of eyes check things.