Placeholder copy will be implemented as written

What it is

Every visible string in the handoff file is treated as product source. Placeholder copy shipping is what happens to “Button,” “Lorem ipsum,” and “Your name here”: unless they are marked not-for-ship, they are copied into the string table and built as written. Engineering has no second channel that says “real copy later.” The file is the copy source.

This is about whether the words get copied, not about how the layout stretches when those words grow, and not about how much width a translation will need.

Why it happens

The unit of implementation is the text property on a node. Export from the design file, copy from a spec, OCR from a screenshot — all of them yield the sentence currently in view. Glyphs do not mark “the designer has not decided” versus “this is final”; both are black letters. Under schedule pressure, unmarked placeholders are treated as approved, because asking “can this ship?” costs more than building it. Once a string is in code, replacing it walks translation, review, and regression, so the placeholder inherits the inertia of real copy.

Placeholders also carry the wrong meaning. “Submit” looks like a neutral action in an English mock; the product’s button is an irreversible delete. A “username” placeholder becomes a login identifier when the product wants an email. Semantic error is harder to catch in a visual walkthrough than a length error, because the screen still looks finished. Placeholders are dangerous not because they look ugly, but because they look done.

Where it stops holding

Wireframes and internal review boards can keep placeholders if the cover says “copy not final, do not ship” and a separate string table is the real source. Sketch lettering that is obviously not the product typeface is copied less often, but that protection vanishes in high fidelity. Legal, trademark, and price slots, even when filled with fake words, are often read by counsel as disclosure — those slots may not use placeholders at all; wait for the real text. Fake names and order ids used as data samples are not UI copy; if they share a layer with button labels and go unlabeled, the fake data is written as a copy constant too.

Applying it

• Every user-visible sentence in the handoff is either final, or marked “not for ship” on the layer or spec and pointed at a blank id in the copy table. There is no third state called “just for now.”
• Treat the string table (or copy doc) as a ship source alongside the design file. Implementation reads only entries marked final; it does not copy unmarked words off the board.
• Delete Latin filler paragraphs from high-fidelity screens. Use one short sentence that carries the real tone; fill space with a block of color, not a fake sentence.
• Before release, reconcile every visible sentence on screen with the copy table. Mismatches still reading Button / Lorem / “click here” go back to the design source as defects, not as a one-word hotfix in code.

Related

• Same group: R2.06.2 Copy length changes the layout · R2.06.3 Copy and design must be reviewed in the same pass · R2.06.4 Variable ranges must ship with the copy · R2.06.5 The same concept keeps the same wording on every surface · R2.06.6 Handoff must reserve space for translation length
• Adjacent: R2.01 Annotation and asset export · T1.04 Terminology Consistency and Glossaries
• Search terms: placeholder copy shipping · lorem as source · dummy copy