Greeking is a style of displaying or rendering text or symbols, not always from the Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...

. Greeking obscures portions of a work for the purpose of either emphasizing form over details or displaying placeholders for unavailable content. The name is a reference to the phrase "Greek to me

Greek to me

That's Greek to me or It's Greek to me is an idiom/dead metaphor in English, claiming that an expression is incomprehensible, either due to complexity or imprecision. The expression may be used with respect to verbal expressions with excessive jargon of dialect, mathematics, or science...

", meaning something that one cannot understand, so that it might as well be in a foreign language.

In typography

Greeked text is used in typography

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...

 to evaluate a certain typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

's appropriateness, overall style or type color

Type color

In typography, type color refers to the weight or boldness of a typeface and is used by designers and typographers to describe the visual tone of a mass of text on a page. The type color of a particular typeface affects the amount of ink on the page, also known as its blackness...

. Because a viewer can be distracted by meaningful content, greeking unimportant text forces the viewer to focus on layout and design.

Greeking is also used when a design is being developed but the content is unfinished. One example might be the layout of a magazine article which has photographs but no text; initially, a lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum

In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum[p] is placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the graphics elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout...

 text is used, and then the nonsense text is replaced with draft versions as they become available. This allows design and layout to be carried out in parallel with content revisions.

In visual media

As in typography, greeking involves inserting nonsense text or, commonly, Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 or Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 text in prototypes of visual media projects (such as in graphic

Graphic design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

 and web design

Web design

Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...

) to check the layout of the final version before the actual text is available, or to enhance layout assessment by eliminating the distraction of readable text. Text of this sort is known as "greeked text", "dummy text", or "jabberwocky

Jabberwocky

"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense verse poem written by Lewis Carroll in his 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...

 text". Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum

In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum[p] is placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the graphics elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout...

is a commonly used example, though this is derived from Latin, not Greek.

In computing

Greeking can refer to the automatic rendering of text characters as unreadable symbols or lines in the layout preview function of word processing

Word processor

A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....

 documents, either to speed up screen display or because the graphics display capabilities of the monitor are insufficient for rendering extremely small texts.

In the arts

Greeking in theatre, television, and film production art-department work refers to the process of changing or hiding corporate trademark

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

s that have not been "cleared" legally for use in the production.

External links

• Lorem Ipsum generator in various languages and charsets