Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

There used to be a time when that was the best line we copywriters could come up with. Probably because no one really knew what it meant.

This is dummy copy. That’s the closest we got to saying it in the language we knew. Layout after layouts came and went, with beautifully set text in just the right amount of space required of the body copy. Which had only one thing to say. This is dummy copy.

But we didn’t stop there. We wrote good dummy copy. We filled ads and brochures and annual reports with inane gobbledygook. Absolute mumbo jumbo that alternated between erudite prose and dreamy poetry. Before it staggered back to drivel that could drive any Copy Supe up the wall.

The good thing about putting our hearts (Not our souls. We had cut them into little pieces and sold it to the group head, the creative director, the account executive, the client servicing director, the media executive, the branch head, the research agency, the hundreds of housewives in fake focus groups, the brand manager, the big client and the big client’s wife who has the final word.) into writing nonsense was, that no one read it. It was a secret that only copywriters shared, while exchanging silent smiles when we bumped into each other on our way in and out of the creative know-it-all director’s cabin.

Besides, it acted as a secret weapon in our endless battle against the suits. So that when they insisted on telling us what to write, we could thrust our personal masterpieces in front of their eyes and mumble meekly (when we were actually dancing the tappankoothu), “You turned a blind eye to this. Smirk. So why should it matter what goes into the ad? Smirk. Smirk.”

But at the end of the day, we wrote so much dummy copy that we finally figured how to write. It was the one thing that kept us living. When as trainees, we weren’t supposed to have lives. ‘Cos we were scummier than the black muck stuck between the nail on the little toe on the left foot of anyone else in the agency. When after hours and hours of proof checking actual ads and brochures and annual reports, our sight went so wonky, that the only way to get it back on track was by staring at the black muck stuck between the nail on the little toe on the left foot of anyone else in the agency.

I chanced upon “lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” after many moons and I almost began to think the art of writing dummy copy has died. But on second thoughts, methinks it’s in fact a thriving business.

It's called blogging.