Brands over time

British Red Cross
over time

Every year keeps its colour across every chart.│ ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022

315 of British Red Cross's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2018 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 83 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 9 other charities, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
315
Years covered
2018–26
Archived before ChatGPT
83
Blog · press
186 · 129

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

British Red Cross's homepage from 2000 to 2026, closest to 1 July, from the Internet Archive. Pick a year or press play. Each headline is quoted from its capture and links to the archived copy.

2026redcross.org.uk24 Jun 2026
British Red Cross homepage, 24 Jun 2026

Screenshot of British Red Cross’s homepage (redcross.org.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 24 Jun 2026. © British Red Cross or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by British Red Cross.

Homepage

2026

“In an emergency, every second counts”

Page title

The British Red Cross | UK Humanitarian Charity

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2011In your area
  2. 2018The power of kindness
  3. 2019Choose to do OneKindThing: together we'll make a difference.
  4. 2021This is Human Kind
  5. 2022People are in crisis right now
  6. 2024People need us right now, and we need you

27 captures. Screenshots are rendered from the archive and can pull in images archived later than the page itself; dates come from the capture. Years without a capture are greyed out in the strip.

02 · Measures by year

How the writing moved

Every year’s pages, averaged. Pick a measure. Hatched bars rest on fewer than 10 pages: context, not a finding. The page count sits under each year.

Sentence lengthAverage words per sentence.
6
12
18
Charities avg 13.4
11.2
16.6
15.1
15.6
17.1
14.9
16.2
14.6
15.3
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
2017no pages
201817 pp
20195 pp
202025 pp
202122 pp
202221 pp
20237 pp
20248 pp
20256 pp
20265 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201811.217
201916.65
202015.125
202115.622
202217.121
202314.97
202416.28
202514.66
202615.35

Years with pages: 2018 (17), 2019 (5), 2020 (25), 2021 (22), 2022 (21), 2023 (7), 2024 (8), 2025 (6), 2026 (5). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Before and after

2019 to Nov 2022 against 2024 to 2026

The same measures on 73 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 19 pages from 2024 on. A change here is a change in style. It does not show how any page was written: people used every one of these words and shapes long before 2022, and SGR-011 found most of the shift across brands was a trend already under way.

Measure2019 to Nov 2022 · 73 pp2024 to 2026 · 19 ppChange
Sentence length
15.915.5−3%
Sentence rhythm
0.610.61−1%
Contractions
11.58.4−27%
"You"
21%27%+5 pts
"We"
53%70%+16 pts
Questions
1.83.0+65%
Exclamations
0.400.00−100%
Long words
24%27%+3 pts
Em dashes
2.041.02−50%
AI-associated words
0.600.14−77%
AI-era marketing words
0.310.07−77%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
0.430.94+119%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.260.08−67%
Page length
871880+1%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (73 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (19 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

British Red Cross among charities

Each dot is one brand’s mean across all its measured pages; the tick is the sector average. Only brands with 10 or more measured pages are shown or counted. Select a dot to open that brand.

  1. Questions

    87% more than its sector

    3.8 against a sector average of 2.1; highest of 9.

  2. "You"

    26% less than its sector

    24% against a sector average of 33%; 3rd lowest of 9.

  3. Contractions

    16% less than its sector

    10.7 against a sector average of 12.7; mid-table, 6th of 9.

Sentence length3rd highest of 9
British Red Cross 15.2
10.317.3
ContractionsMid-table, 6th of 9
British Red Cross 10.7
4.622.1
"You"3rd lowest of 9
British Red Cross 24%
15%49%
"We"Mid-table, 4th of 9
British Red Cross 59%
39%71%
QuestionsHighest of 9
British Red Cross 3.8
0.03.8
Long wordsMid-table, 5th of 9
British Red Cross 24%
23%30%
Em dashesMid-table, 5th of 9
British Red Cross 1.72
0.482.90
AI-associated wordsMid-table, 6th of 9
British Red Cross 0.54
0.040.86
ExclamationsLowest of 9
British Red Cross 0.19
0.190.88
Page lengthMid-table, 5th of 9
British Red Cross 838
6341,479

Pages measured: Cancer Research UK 133 · Oxfam 201 · British Red Cross 315 · Macmillan Cancer Support 290 · RNLI 35 · NSPCC 174 · Barnardo's 298 · Mind 228 · Save the Children 317 · RSPCA 3. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

05 · Vocabulary

Words British Red Cross uses more than its peers

The words this brand reaches for more often than the rest of its sector. This is subject matter more than voice.

aid58.3 vs 7.8
emergency39.4 vs 4.8
volunteers42.0 vs 6.1
asylum21.0 vs 1.4
humanitarian27.4 vs 5.3
refugees18.3 vs 2.5
loneliness14.9 vs 1.2
appeal13.6 vs 1.3
floods12.1 vs 0.6
disaster12.3 vs 1.0
earthquake15.1 vs 0.2
crisis42.6 vs 16.5
British Red CrossSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 315 pages. Checked for product names and page furniture.

06 · In its own words

What it sounded like

Openings of real pages, quoted word for word, oldest first. Each links to the page, or to the Internet Archive’s copy when it has gone.

20204 May · PressArchived copy
“Since the beginning of lockdown*, an estimated 43 million people across the UK reveal they have done something kind to help others, according to research carried out by the British Red Cross.”
Press release
20211 Jul · Blog
“From discussing beans on toast to campaigning against landmines, Princess Diana was one of our most dedicated supporters.”
Princess Diana
20239 Aug · Blog
“Who knew that as well as being a legendary nurse, Florence Nightingale was a dab hand at crafts? We present this pretty Christmas card from our archives, handmade and sent by Florence over 100 years ago.”
A Christmas card from Florence Nightingale

07 · Every page

All 317 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 315 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (2 under 150 words of text). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20265 pages
20256 pages
20248 pages
20237 pages
202221 pages
202122 pages
202025 pages
20195 pages
201817 pages
In the overall numbers, no year199 pages
Not measured2 pages
  • News27 Mar 2018 · press · 147 words · archivedUnder 150 words of text: too short to measure
  • News stories, views and mediaundated · press · 134 wordsUnder 150 words of text: too short to measure

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

British Red Cross's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, fetched from the live site in 2026 and from the Internet Archive for 2015 to November 2022. Homepages are shown as captures; product and help pages are not measured.

The measures

Code counts from ScriptGrain’s writing instruments: sentence length and rhythm, contractions, pronouns, punctuation, long words, and three published lists of AI-associated words. No AI model reads or judges any page.

What it cannot say

These measures describe style. They cannot tell who or what wrote a page, and nothing here says or implies that any brand used AI to write.

Sample sizes

Every number carries its page count. Years under 10 pages, and before-and-after comparisons with under 10 pages on a side, are shown as context only.

Sentence length
Average words per sentence.
Sentence rhythm
How much sentence length varies (standard deviation over mean). Higher reads less even.
Contractions
Contractions (we're, you'll, it's) per 1,000 words. A rough gauge of how conversational the writing is.
"You"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "you": how much the writing addresses the reader.
"We"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "we": how much the writing talks about the organisation.
Questions
Question marks per 1,000 words.
Exclamations
Exclamation marks per 1,000 words.
Long words
Share of words with seven or more letters.
Em dashes
Em dashes per 1,000 words.
AI-associated words
Words from SGR-007's three AI-associated lists, per 1,000 words. These are style markers that people used long before ChatGPT; a higher rate says nothing about who or what wrote the page.
AI-era marketing words
Marketing words that became more common in AI-era copy (seamless, elevate, unlock...), per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Quieter LLM-favoured words
Everyday words language models are known to over-use, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
AI-associated sentence shapes
Sentence patterns such as "not just X, but Y", found by ScriptGrain's cliche checker, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Page length
Average words per page.

Studies: SGR-009: Do brands in the same sector sound the same? · SGR-010: How UK brands write · SGR-011: Did brand writing change after ChatGPT?.