“Latin placeholder text isn’t just a simple nuisance. It’s a plague on web design, a massive obstacle to building truly great online experiences. There’s no need for it in a world where content goes right to the heart of every successful website.” – John McGarvey
The argument that John makes is sound: that designers shouldn’t be using dummy text in place of relevant content. I completely agree that designers should place content first! Start with content, then add structure, a logical progression of thought and aesthetic styling.

That being said, saying that there’s absolutely no need for filler text is definitely shortsighted. From the small perspective that McGarvey frames the argument, he’s right. However, if we take a step back, we can see that there are still tons of possible and legitimate uses for lorem ipsum.

In a nice theoretical web design workflow, designers have complete control over content and the progression of the design. In the real world, those who pay designers demand mockups before providing content. Perhaps there’s a paragraph of legal copy that the designer needs to consider in the layout but won’t actually receive from the legal department until much further down the road. Or maybe the PHP guy needs to test his new page generating script simply to see if it works. There’s also the consideration of blog template designers, who do in fact need to design content containers that work for a variety of different purposes.