About

Richard Ingram

I’m a web writer, content strategy advocate, and Partner at Ingserv, an accessible web design company. I’ve been writing for the web for 10 years, starting out as a Games Journalist for Barrysworld and later GAME before turning my full attention to helping clients find their voice effectively online.

You can email me at hello {at} richardingram.co.uk and find me on Twitter, Linkedin and, if you must, Facebook.

Questions nobody has ever asked (and probably never will)

The chap in the background, is it you?

Are you serious? Those chiselled looks and stone cold stare (yes, it’s a bust) belong to the ancient Roman philosopher Ciecro.

What’s the deal with Cicero anyway? Hardly a modern poster boy is he?

It’s all to do with lorem ipsum, the Latin-ish passage, which is often inserted as filler copy for our web page mock-ups. It was intended to show how the type will look before the copy is available.

It appears that lorem ipsum formed part of the Cicero’s passages, specifically De finibus bonorum et malorum, a treatise on the theory of ethics, written in 45 BC.

The original reads:

Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit… (“There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain…”)

So it’s thanks to Cicero, and the early adopters of lorem ipsum, that content strategists have an easy way of explaining the benefits of our discipline before people’s eyes glaze over.