
What happens when placeholder text doesn’t get replaced - pascal07
http://www.elezea.com/2014/02/lorem-ipsum-gone-wrong/
======
kayhi
A recent up roar occurred in the world of chemistry when a paper was published
with the phrase:

"Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound,
just make up an elemental analysis…"

Here is a link the supplementary information where the quote is located on
page 12.
[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/om4000067/suppl_file/o...](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/om4000067/suppl_file/om4000067_si_002.pdf)

------
chimeracoder
We had a very funny example of this at my school paper. Our football team was
one game away from a winless season, and many people were demanding that the
head coach be fired for this terrible performance[0].

As a joke, someone referred to Coach Wilson on a pull quote as "head coach of
the Columbia football team until Monday morning". This was supposed to be
removed before print, but nobody caught it.

To make matters _worse_ , the coach actually _was_ fired that weekend (not
even 24 hours after the team had its only win of the season)! That led to an
_incredibly_ awkward retraction: ("This was a joke, and we're sorry... but
apparently we were right, even though we didn't know it"[1])

This sort of stuff goes on in newsrooms all the time. I'm actually surprised
that these mistakes don't happen more often, given how common these are, and
given that most copy-editing happens in the wee hours of the morning, fueled
by caffeine and sleep deprivation.

[0] Don't have time to scan through the PDFs of the printed versions (IIRC it
was only in the printed version), but it was one of these articles:
[http://www.columbiaspectator.com/tags/norries-
wilson](http://www.columbiaspectator.com/tags/norries-wilson)

[1] I was on the board of the paper at the time, so I can confirm that we
actually _didn 't_ have prior knowledge of this - it really was just a very
amusingly-timed joke.

~~~
lifeformed
Why doesn't print software include a "placeholder" text formatting function?
You highlight some text and mark it as placeholder. You can toggle on
highlighting when you want to find it to replace, or toggle off to see what it
looks like as a final piece. It could also auto-generate lipsum for you. Also,
before you publish it, it'll warn you if you have any placeholder text left.

~~~
dublinben
Adobe InDesign certainly does support this. Commercial newspapers are usually
using some archaic program though.

------
TacticalCoder
One of the very best one I've seen back when I was working in the book
publishing business (many moons ago) was this: a bogus screenshot (totally
unrelated to the book) with a legend saying something like this: _" Insert
something similar to what's in book X at page 237"_... With "book X" being the
name of a book by a competitor.

Somehow everybody (proofreader(s), author(s), etc.) ended missing that and the
bogus screenshot and that legend made it to the final, printed, version of the
book : )

~~~
Gracana
Ouch, that one is painfully embarrassing.

------
VBprogrammer
Someone I used to work with once left a alert('W.A.N.K') in the codebase. This
was in a fairly rarely occurring branch of code and made it all the way to
production.

I've taken that as a warning and never write anything I wouldn't be happy for
a customer to see in logs, test-data, comments (although handfuls of sarcasm
are still acceptable) or debugging code.

~~~
mootothemax
_I 've taken that as a warning and never write anything I wouldn't be happy
for a customer to see in logs, test-data, comments (although handfuls of
sarcasm are still acceptable) or debugging code._

Very good advice!

I once worked with someone who had the unfortunate habit of naming debugging
log files "shit".

After a server migration, a couple of paths had been incorrectly set, leading
to the client complaining about a now-memorable error: "Cannot open: shit".

 _Whoops_

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
> "Cannot open: shit".

I'm adopting this error message for I/O from now on.

------
jgrahamc
How I regret not watermarking the Lorem Ipsum wine bottle image.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/14082734075741798...](https://mobile.twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/140827340757417984)

~~~
crazygringo
I may be an idiot, but I feel like I _need_ to get a bottle of that to keep on
my desk. But googling it only seems to reveal a different style of label.
[1][2] Have I got the search right? You didn't happen to buy it online?

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=2009+Roland+Tissier+Sancerre...](https://www.google.com/search?q=2009+Roland+Tissier+Sancerre&tbm=isch)

[2] [http://bestbuyliquors.com/roland-tissier-fils-
sancerre-2009....](http://bestbuyliquors.com/roland-tissier-fils-
sancerre-2009.html)

Edit: looks like different labels for US and UK? Oh well. :( [3]

[3] [http://www.colombierwines.co.uk/products/Sancerre-
Rouge%2C-D...](http://www.colombierwines.co.uk/products/Sancerre-
Rouge%2C-Domaine-Tissier-Rolland%2C-Loire-2009.html)

OK, enough wasting of time...

~~~
jgrahamc
[http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/nice-bottle-of-lorem-
ipsum-2009....](http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/nice-bottle-of-lorem-
ipsum-2009.html)

------
chaz
Stopping for 30 seconds to come up with subpar copy is usually worth it vs
using some sort of placeholder that you need to come back and fix later. When
I know the copy is awful and that I need to come back and replace it, I put in
a comment that says

    
    
      # COPY_REQUIRED
    

As long as I'm consistent about the tag that I use, I can easily search my
project for my tags and fix before launch.

Similarly, I do a fair amount of presentations, and I always put in huge red
letters a note to update the metrics, provide a source, etc. It's hard to miss
when doing a final flip-through.

~~~
skj
When writing papers in grad school, we'd leave placeholders in all the time,
but always prefixed with the string "ZZZ", so they'd be really easy to search
for.

~~~
k00pa
I sometimes use similar approach with code to indicate really hacky code that
should be removed before any bigger releases.

~~~
iLoch
I think that's what //FIXME: is for. TODO and FIXME are both commonly
supported, as well as a few others.

~~~
gknoy
Similarly, when adding debugging-aid print statements, I prefix them with
">>>", and make sure I don't use it elsewhere.

~~~
gcb0
why not "debug: "?

------
dspillett
There was a great example of this with QR codes, though amusingly I can't find
the link at all at the moment...

For a while the first hit in Google's image search for QR Code was a code for
a person's personal site which he'd put up as a test and by happenstance got
picked up by a few places which a few other places picked it up from and so
forth. All fine when you are explaining QR codes and are fine pushing people
to some random but currently inoffensive site, but a number of places used it
up as a placeholder in adversing campaigns then forgot to replace it with one
representing the real URL before going to print.

The owner of the page knew what had happened as he had offers to rent or buy
the URL, demands that he turn it over when he didn't want to, and even threats
of being sued for "hacking our advertising". IIRC he never "sold the URL"
instead leaving his personal page in place. He had the good grace not to add
something offensive to the page, which I'm sure I would have done after
receiving any such demand or threat. I would have least published a list of
the fools that fell into the "trap" with a copy of relevant correspondence
(sanitised to remove names and such).

------
einhverfr
This sort of thing can also happen when people are not really _able_ to check
to make sure the content is correct. For example, see
[http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/nov/01/5](http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/nov/01/5).

Fortunately the text was bilingual and I doubt there are many Welsh who don't
speak English...

------
kalleboo
Or placeholder products...
[https://www.google.com/search?q=dave+s+test+pid](https://www.google.com/search?q=dave+s+test+pid)

~~~
coldpie
What's the story behind this? Some common shopping cart software?

~~~
mckee1
Yeah, GSI Commerce (now Ebay Enterprise) I think.

------
scott_s
Such an instance lead to a libel lawsuit at Virginia Tech in 1996 when the
student paper left "director of butt licking" as the title for an
administrator in a pulled quote.

Article from '96 on the filing:
[http://www.splc.org/news/report_detail.asp?id=41&edition=16](http://www.splc.org/news/report_detail.asp?id=41&edition=16)

Article from '97 when the judge dismissed the case as it was "not defamatory":
[http://www.splc.org/news/report_detail.asp?id=136&edition=14](http://www.splc.org/news/report_detail.asp?id=136&edition=14)

------
ChrisNorstrom
That's why I always use "_X_" as placeholder text. At the very end of
development I run a search for "_X_" on the templates/files to see if I
accidentally left any. Not only does it stand out visually but it's very easy
to run a search on without any false positives.

------
pionar
An ATM I use frequently hasn't been properly set up, so during the
transaction, you'll see things like "[CONSUMER MESSAGE]" and "[NON-MEMBER
FEE]" and "[EXIT MESSAGE HERE]". Makes me smile every time.

~~~
Trufa
It's funny but I think that's the way to go if you can't get your content
first, if something slips through, it might be weird to the customer, but not
insulting.

~~~
Consultant32452
In this case it's designed this way because the ATM vendor is not the same
company as the bank that owns/runs the ATM. The bank will want to put
different text depending on the locale, default language, their own bank
marketing jargon, etc. This is a perfect example where design should come
before copy.

------
Fishkins
I know someone who used to work as a programmer in finance. One of his
coworkers liked to use creative placeholders in his email templates. One day
something went wrong with the placeholder substitution, and a bunch of their
clients received emails starting, "Dear ${rich_fat_bastard}". That guy's
career in finance didn't last too long.

------
MichaelGG
I learned this at 18, when after a particularly frustrating round of edits on
some file, I sent it to my partner for review with a filename like
"fuckthiscustomer". He then forwarded it on, without reviewing.

Customer wasn't pleased and demanded an explanation. Somehow my partner
convinced them it was an email virus in their system. Still, lesson learned.

------
sharkweek
So good -- I remember seeing one in the NYT when the George Zimmerman jury
verdict was reached, that was just a XX/XX/XXXX in the date section. Assuming
they had both articles written.

I suspect this will only become more and more common in the "publish first,
edit later" evolving world of online journalism.

~~~
goatforce5
It's been standard practice since long before the Web to have pre-written
obituaries for high profile people (politicians, royals, the Pope, etc.) and
to update them periodically. When someone of this stature dies, the newspapers
will have multiple pages of content ready to roll-out with minimal editing.

Some people once found a bunch of work-in-progress obits on CNN's website:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_premature_obituaries#Th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_premature_obituaries#The_CNN.com_incident)

And the BBC had a 30 min comedy about an obit writer who saved their job by
murdering high-profile individuals:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0653345/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0653345/)

~~~
sharkweek
Reminds me of the SNL clip where Tom Brokaw was going on vacation and had to
pre-record every possible news story:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkhwiuRbOEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkhwiuRbOEE)

------
narshe
I worked at a place (but not on the team) where someone used the Ebonics
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Eng...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English))
version of Lorem Ipsum to fill in a large amount of text on the app. They
forgot about it and showed it to the client and it contained a lot f-bombs and
n-words.

It seems like people need to learn the hard way to not put that stuff in. If
it's there, it'll be accidentally shown to the wrong person.

~~~
jtheory
> and it contained a lot f-bombs and n-words.

Yeah, calling that "Ebonics" is being too charitable.

------
herokusaki
...And this is why you never put insults in placeholder text!

~~~
mrspeaker
Recently I've started censoring myself with log message even if I know they
can't survive for more than one page refresh. It's tempting to take out some
frustration with a "console.log("fuuuuuuuuuu!")" but in the end it's not worth
those verrry rare events when you're accidentally insulting a customer.

------
moron4hire
It's a testament to how much more software we could stand to develop, software
that probably hasn't even been touched, yet.

For a newspaper, obviously they need to have a parallel process to layout the
paper and develop the content. Why don't they have software now that
"compiles" the paper from design files and content files and won't release the
copy until all of the content is marked as reviewed?

Or essentially, as the person is performing the layout for stuff like
callouts, instead of generating their own placeholder content, they generate
rules for the place holder content (just as they seem to be typing rules into
the callout as the placeholder itself), and the system would both generate the
placeholder for the designer, while also queuing the snippet of content for
the writer.

Then, you just have to train your users "never type in your own placeholder
text." Use the queue as a project management tool. Editors could then review
the text, mark it as reviewed, or re-enqueue it for rewriting. The article is
done when the queue is done.

I mean, really, I'm not even describing anything revolutionary here. It's
BugZilla, Redmine, etc., just with a layout program tied to the fields in the
database.

Would newspapers and magazines actually use something like that? Or is
pigheaded entrenchment into old ways the disease of their industry that is
leading them to die out?

~~~
goblin89
Sounds like something along the lines of
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_InCopy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_InCopy):

> Once integrated, writers, editors and designers can simultaneously work on
> the same page; the designer creates the page layout with InDesign, while
> editors simultaneously edit different stories with InCopy, via the Adobe
> LiveEdit rights management system.

I recall there's at least one other product for similar kind of workflow (not
tied to Adobe ecosystem), but being no longer in the industry I forgot the
name.

~~~
moron4hire
So is the software any good? Why wouldn't something of such obvious utility
take over? I have seen plenty of cases where users will circumvent a system
they are given if it is difficult to use or they don't understand it.

~~~
goblin89
I know of one example where this kind of integration is actually in place and
properly utilized. It's a pretty big newspaper. The integration is provided by
a publishing system called K4.

Admittedly, very few publications would employ similar systems here. Because
they're complex to set up, expensive, and not easy to pirate (I don't think
many small publications paid for their copies of InDesign/PageMaker), because
there's inertia and fear of losing their jobs among the staff (not many young
forward-thinking professionals in print nowadays), etc. Not sure how things
are US, though.

~~~
moron4hire
Okay, not surprising.

------
tzs
Also funny is when error text makes it through. Back in the '80s, I'd
occasionally see in the classified ads section of the Los Angeles Times ads
that looked like this: "FILE ID=18273 NOT FOUND".

The Lorem Ipsum text greatly confused me the first time I encountered it. That
was in Apple Pages. I made a new document using a template, and it was full of
that text. I didn't realize it was meant to be nonsense. I assumed it was
meant to be sensible sample text, and should have been English for people in
the US, and therefore I must have somehow managed to screw up my
internationalization settings somewhere and it was showing me some foreign
language's sensible placeholder instead.

I spent a long time trying to figure out how to change my settings to get the
Enlish placeholder, before finally doing what I should have done in the first
place, and Googling the actual text.

------
chris_wot
One of the software products I worked on once forgot to take out test data
from their reports. We got a support ticket asking what the report "I can hear
angels" did.

------
dangravell
I'm not convinced that last example wasn't a winemaker looking for some fancy-
looking latin to make his wine label look classier.

~~~
jgrahamc
Nope. I took that photo and tweeted it. I subsequently phoned the vineyard.
They had no idea about the mistake.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/14082734075741798...](https://mobile.twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/140827340757417984)

~~~
dangravell
Remarkable effort on your part :D

------
jmnicolas
Humans make mistakes and I'm glad we have those placeholders creating funny
situations.

However I don't put anything in my comments / code that would reflect poorly
on me or my company. A bit of humor is always refreshing, but vulgarity is a
no no.

~~~
vincentleeuwen
Insults is definitely a bad idea but think that dummy content is unwise in
general. In my experience, actual content almost always makes the design look
different from dummy content.

------
theboss
I've also experienced this. Recently I interviewed at a big tech company and
when I received the original e-mail it said "Hello NAME" instead of my first
name.

I asked if it was recruiter error or programmer error and never got a
response.

~~~
hk__2
Probably because your email was internally forwarded to PUT_AN_EMAIL_HERE.

------
MadManE
I found Lorem Ipsum on the side of a Chipotle bag not too long ago. I thought
it had to have been satire, but now I realize that it's just incompetence.

~~~
LogicX
Confirmed. I tweeted about it:
[https://twitter.com/MikeSchroll/statuses/4640740009320448](https://twitter.com/MikeSchroll/statuses/4640740009320448)

Pic: [http://twitpic.com/37g3li](http://twitpic.com/37g3li)

------
greggman
On the one hand you should cut people some slack. Content First = noob (okay,
that's probably unfair but...)

I've worked on projects with 300 + lines (yea, not many) but that had to be
translated into 17 languages. That's 5100 things that need to be checked. I
know of games that with all the localization had over 40,000 dialog audio
files (yes, that's four zero k).

 _Content First_ doesn't work on big projects IMO. In fact with "agile" you
won't even know what content you need until you get there.

That said, with a little forethought it would certainly be possible to try to
design some system so you could at least kind of auto verify that at least all
your placeholder stuff has been replaced with something not placeholder. For
example if you prefixed all placeholder text with "PLACEHOLDER: " and then had
a script that would check. Could probably do similar things for audio files
though it might be a little harder.

Unfortunately for people adding new text or audio if they forgot to follow the
rules you'd have a hole. I suppose you could require first check in to follow
the placeholder rules? Or maybe someone has a better idea

Now for a project I worked on. If you play the US Crash Team Racing (CTR) on
PS1 and unlock Penta Penguin (IIRC), and then race with him you'll hear "test
sound 1" and "test sound 2". I don't remember how many sounds there are in CTR
but Penta Penguin was only really in the game for the Japanese version which
could only be unlocked by going to a promotional event and getting a special
save stored on your memory card. So, being a relatively secret character no
one play tested him in the USA and no one bothered to go over the 1000s of
sound files to see which ones were still placeholders until after it shipped.

------
rmrfrmrf
I mean, yeah, I'm sure these were all embarrassing at the time, but keeping in
mind that newspapers are published _every single day_ , you're talking about
an error rate that's extremely low, relatively speaking.

I'm actually not seeing how _any_ of these examples would have been helped by
content-first design. Having the content first is just a _different_ approach
with its own unique set of issues (namely that you'll be changing the content
700 times _during_ the design process, which is actually a bit nightmarish
when you're passing data around). I wouldn't call it better, though.

------
waylandsmithers
I was an editor of a small print publication and this happened to me once. The
caption below a photo was something like "Please tell me this isn't a stupid
picture of XYZ" (can't remember what it was) as a joke to the copy editor who
would eventually see it an laugh at how hilarious I was. Of course it slipped
by because it just looked like a normal caption.

I'm not sure these examples advance this article's point too far-- incidents
like these could have been avoided by more clearly marking that the text was a
placeholder.

------
kens
I saw a padlock for sale with the packaging in English, French, and Spanish.
Unfortunately they left Lorem Ipsum in place of some of the translations. This
would be harder to spot than most non-replaced placeholders, even if someone
is proofreading. (Latin is in the same Romance language family as English and
French.)

Photo at [http://www.righto.com/2009/11/lorem-ipsue-when-
international...](http://www.righto.com/2009/11/lorem-ipsue-when-
internationalization.html)

------
darklajid
A very recent example: The newsletter announcing the blackphone (discussed
here as well).

Upper left corner says:

Use this area to offer a short teaser of your email's content. Text here will
be shown in the preview area of some email clients".

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1194203/Screenshot_2014-...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1194203/Screenshot_2014-02-24-16-31-12.png)

Oops :)

------
aestra
Funny enough I just found another one today.

[http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/75793/1/cesifo_wp503....](http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/75793/1/cesifo_wp503.pdf)
[pdf]

all the figure placeholder text weren't replaced and the figures are missing.

Figure 1 about here

Figure 2 about here

Figure 3 about here

...

------
helpermethod
Remindes me of this:
[http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Don't_...](http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Don't_Be_Cute_with_Your_Test_Data)

------
scelerat
'HED', 'LEDE', 'GRAF', 'DEK' and a number of other specialized spellings are
often used for placeholders because they (theoretically) stand out for copy
editors and spell checkers.

------
aestra
Ok, I give up. Where is the placeholder text on the first newspaper? The 4th
picture down, has "A Push To Let Ryan Be Ryan" as a heading.

~~~
DangerousPie
Last sentence of that paragraph says "And another line here."

Took me a while to find too.

------
mikeleeorg
Methinks it may be wise to add grepping for placeholder text as part of one's
build process.

------
interstitial
Premise is silly. You want deadline-based newspaper designers to WAIT until
all the stories and headlines are done - then design the paper. And get a
paper out? I take it you internet junkies know nothing of the once enormous
scope of journalism and the resource allocation necessary to accomplish it.
Let me explain parallel process project management to you someday.

~~~
vidar
That enormous scope is obviously what is killing the newspapers.

~~~
praptak
What is killing the newspapers is the much cheaper and much better targeted
ads delivery via the internet and smartphones.

~~~
eli
Dunno if smartphones are really in the picture (yet), but between competing
with TV for ad dollars and Craigslist for classified ads, they are in a tough
spot.

------
benihana
This is a reminder to all the junior developers (and some of the forgetful
senior developers) as to why you _never_ put anything in testing text that you
don't want the world to see. Having users see "Fucking FuckBalls" as
placeholder instead of "John Doe" is alarming and will lead to quite the
awkward discussion with your boss.

------
gcb0
first job in early 90s doing website for huge newspaper. fill elections page
with outrageous but real quotes from the campaign. editor assumes a few are
good to go and publishes. major shitstorm. team makes a standard to only use
ipsum lorem or Nononono.

