Filler exists to stop you reading
The reason placeholder text is Latin rather than English is that it cannot be read. Put real copy in a mockup and everyone in the review discusses the copy - the headline is wrong, that claim needs legal approval, we do not say it like that - and nobody looks at the layout, which is the thing being reviewed.
Nonsense text pushes attention back onto shape: how a heading sits against a paragraph, where a line breaks, whether a column is too wide to scan, what happens at the third paragraph when the container was designed around two. That is the entire job, and it is why the same Latin has survived five hundred years of typesetting.
The amount is the part that matters
A card component that shows a truncated summary needs a specific number of words to test truncation. A meta description preview needs enough characters to cross the limit. A comment thread needs one short entry and one long one to see how the layout copes with both.
Asking for three paragraphs when what you need is forty words means generating too much and deleting some, every time, for every component. Counting by words or sentences rather than only by paragraphs removes that step, which matters when you are filling a dozen slots in one design.
Filler that reaches production is a real problem
Lorem ipsum ships more often than anyone admits - in a footer, an empty state, a meta description, an alt attribute, a transactional email nobody opened during testing. Search engines index it, customers read it, and it does more damage to credibility than a plain empty space would have.
Two habits prevent it. Keep placeholder text out of anything a template renders by default, so an unfilled field shows nothing rather than Latin. And search for ipsum across the codebase before a release - it takes seconds and catches the one instance that made it past review.