in this edition

• Story of Ipsum
• Resist the Monkey
• AOL warns MSN
• SB Holds Breath
• Free Stuff

The Story of Ipsum
a letter from the editor/intern

As is often the case with corporate newsletters, especially the electronic types, Justin Downey Marketing's eNewsletter has fallen to me, the intern.

I assume you are as curious about where in the world they came up with ipsumNEWS (that's how they make my type it). I did some digging and I was able to find this, the fake story of IpsumNEWS:

"Ipsum News"
(Roughly) Seeking the Truth in News

Usually beginning "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", Loreum Ipsum is, today, simply dummy text for the creative design business.  It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a document  when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. This way, the reader can focus on the color, layout, and design of the document rather than the content, but this was not always the case…

In fact, contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a 2000-year old piece of Latin literature.  Cicero's "De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” or "The Purpose of Good and Evil" was the first known use of Loreum Ipsum in the following passage: "Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

But why isn’t "Loreum Ipsum" found together in the previous passage?

Until the 1500’s and large portions of the public became literate, Latin script was still written on scrolls.  Continuous reading of the scroll was more akin to reading a musical score than reading text.  Eventually, the text was reorganized to make it easier for rapid, silent reading rather than slower reading made aloud for dramatic effect. 

If we reverse-engineer Cincero’s passage to the way it was originally written, we receive the following translation: “There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."

Thus, our eNewsletter, Ipsum News, is a marketing eNewsletter which seeks the latest marketing best-practices--at least that's what they told me.