Helpful random text generators

As a designer of non-Roman scripts I often have a need for text with which to do testing. But if I don’t speak a language that uses that non-Roman, trolling the web for decent samples can be frustrating and time consuming. I recently discovered that for some initial tests, there are a couple of good free resources: adhesiontext™ and a lorem-ipsum generator.

Adhesiontext™ generates words using a whole or partial character set, like the Latin or Arabic alphabets. Depending on the script, you get a few options like punctation and case. It produces a dummy paragraph with words that have or are close to having actual meaning. The nicest feature of adhesiontext™ is its capability of generating text with only a few letters. This is extremely useful for testing a font-in-progress in the FontLab metrics window or in Indesign. Adhesiontext™ only returns one paragraph though, so if you’re looking for a more natural flow of text, or content for several pages, then the lorem-ipsum generator is better.

Click here for the multilingual lorem-ipsum generator

This particular generator doesn’t offer as many different scripts as adhesiontext™ does, but it does give you options for Chinese, Japanese, and even Morse code, if you are so inclined. The generated text has a much more natural feel, with long and short words broken down into as many paragraphs as specified. It works pretty much like any normal content generator.

This article, written by Becca Hirsbrunner Spalinger, formerly appeared on ScriptSource.