Lorem Ipsum Dot Gov Dot UK

I love testing in production. The thrill of accidentally publishing some dummy data - or taking down an entire website - is similar to skydiving without a parachute. Exquisite excitement followed by heart-stopping terror. Before going live with a new website or service, it's sensible to test how text looks on it. Most people don't test with readable text - it's too easy for management to start reading the content rather than looking at the layout. So the default is the Latin text "Lorem ipsum". Latin looks enough like English to get a feel for how text will render - but most people can't read it so they gloss over the words and look at the layout. Say, it sure would be annoying if those dummy pages ever made their way to production, right?!? One of the things that's fascinating about seeing testing data in a live environment is that you get a small peek behind the curtain of how a site was made. A tiny glimpse into the minds of the people who made it. Who was Alice? Did she enjoy her…