Brands over time

Direct Line
over time

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

191 of Direct Line's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2022, measured sentence by sentence, 57 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 9 other insurers, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
191
Years covered
2015–22
Archived before ChatGPT
57
Blog · press
189 · 2

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Direct Line'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.

2026directline.com15 Jun 2026
Direct Line homepage, 15 Jun 2026

Screenshot of Direct Line’s homepage (directline.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 15 Jun 2026. © Direct Line or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Direct Line.

Homepage

2026

No headline in this capture

Page title

Home | Direct Line

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2011Direct Line Help
  2. 2013Direct Line Together. Saving made easy.
  3. 2014Find out more Find out more
  4. 2016What would you like to know more about?
  5. 2021Coronavirus updates and support
  6. 2023Manage your policy

19 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
Insurance avg 13.6
16.6
16.3
12.7
13.8
12.1
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20151 pp
2016no pages
2017no pages
2018no pages
20193 pp
20201 pp
202145 pp
20227 pp
2023no pages
2024no pages
2025no pages
2026no pages
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201516.61
201916.33
202012.71
202113.845
202212.17

Years with pages: 2015 (1), 2019 (3), 2020 (1), 2021 (45), 2022 (7). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Against its sector

Direct Line among insurers

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. "We"

    59% less than its sector

    12% against a sector average of 28%; 3rd lowest of 10.

  2. Contractions

    40% more than its sector

    25.3 against a sector average of 18.1; highest of 10.

  3. "You"

    31% more than its sector

    87% against a sector average of 66%; 2nd highest of 10.

Sentence length4th highest of 10
Direct Line 13.8
10.517.1
ContractionsHighest of 10
Direct Line 25.3
9.625.3
"You"2nd highest of 10
Direct Line 87%
43%88%
"We"3rd lowest of 10
Direct Line 12%
10%52%
QuestionsMid-table, 6th of 10
Direct Line 4.6
2.75.8
Long words2nd lowest of 10
Direct Line 19%
19%29%
Em dashes4th lowest of 10
Direct Line 1.66
1.263.84
AI-associated words3rd lowest of 10
Direct Line 0.40
0.161.23
ExclamationsMid-table, 5th of 10
Direct Line 0.30
0.041.11
Page length4th lowest of 10
Direct Line 962
8411,707

Pages measured: Aviva 273 · Direct Line 191 · Admiral 238 · LV= 305 · AXA 186 · Hastings Direct 146 · esure 133 · Legal & General 286 · Zurich 149 · Bupa 142. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

04 · Vocabulary

Words Direct Line 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.

car207.8 vs 57.1
motor60.6 vs 6.0
dog49.6 vs 5.0
tips56.3 vs 8.8
magazine35.2 vs 3.3
pet45.2 vs 7.4
dogs27.2 vs 2.0
bike24.1 vs 1.1
listed22.9 vs 1.7
text16.4 vs 0.8
test27.8 vs 5.4
tags64.8 vs 0.1
Direct LineSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 191 pages. Product names and page furniture filtered automatically; list not yet reviewed.

05 · 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.

2021Jan (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“A child car seat provides essential safety for a child in the event of an accident. This guide will give an overview of child car seats and the law, designed to help you make an informed purchase.”
Child Car Seat Laws, Rules & Regulations
2021Feb (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“Mortgage payments, energy costs, council tax, home insurance, water charges… it can seem as though the list of bills for your property is never-ending.”
How Much Does It Cost To Run Your Home?

06 · Every page

All 192 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 191 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 same text as an earlier page from this brand). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20227 pages
202145 pages
20201 page
20193 pages
20151 page
In the overall numbers, no year134 pages
Not measured1 page

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Direct Line'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?.