Brands over time

EE
over time

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

168 of EE's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 35 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 15 other mobile and broadband providers, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
168
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
35
Blog · press
66 · 102

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

EE's homepage from 2013 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.

2026ee.co.uk30 Jun 2026
EE homepage, 30 Jun 2026

Screenshot of EE’s homepage (ee.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 30 Jun 2026. © EE or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by EE.

Homepage

2026

“SUMMER SALE HAS LANDED”

Page title

EE | The UK's Best Mobile Network, Broadband & Tech Deals

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2013WITH SUPERFAST 4G, ONLY ON EE (A PRETTY BIG DEAL).
  2. 2015WiFi Calling on iPhone 6
  3. 2017Totally unlimited broadband
  4. 2022GET 3 MONTHS HALF PRICE ON ALL BROADBAND
  5. 2024EE'S BIG SUMMER SAVERS
  6. 2026SUMMER SALE HAS LANDED

12 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.
8
16
24
Telecoms avg 13.5
14.7
15.4
15.1
19.0
20.4
19.2
19.1
18.4
18.3
17.7
21.0
18.5
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
201535 pp
20168 pp
201710 pp
20187 pp
20198 pp
20204 pp
202112 pp
20228 pp
20237 pp
20245 pp
20254 pp
20265 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201514.735
201615.48
201715.110
201819.07
201920.48
202019.24
202119.112
202218.48
202318.37
202417.75
202521.04
202618.55

Years with pages: 2015 (35), 2016 (8), 2017 (10), 2018 (7), 2019 (8), 2020 (4), 2021 (12), 2022 (8), 2023 (7), 2024 (5), 2025 (4), 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 32 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 14 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 · 32 pp2024 to 2026 · 14 ppChange
Sentence length
19.318.9−2%
Sentence rhythm
0.770.76−2%
Contractions
16.216.1−1%
"You"
36%27%−9 pts
"We"
47%47%+0 pts
Questions
0.20.5+189%
Exclamations
0.420.07−84%
Long words
24%26%+1 pts
Em dashes
2.231.83−18%
AI-associated words
0.761.09+44%
AI-era marketing words
0.400.46+14%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
0.440.36−19%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.970.21−79%
Page length
1,3561,806+33%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (32 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (14 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

EE among mobile and broadband providers

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. Em dashes

    31% more than its sector

    3.47 against a sector average of 2.65; 3rd highest of 14.

  2. Questions

    28% less than its sector

    3.0 against a sector average of 4.2; 4th lowest of 14.

  3. Sentence length

    24% more than its sector

    16.7 against a sector average of 13.5; highest of 14.

Sentence lengthHighest of 14
EE 16.7
9.716.7
ContractionsMid-table, 7th of 14
EE 18.0
12.725.2
"You"4th lowest of 14
EE 51%
30%84%
"We"Mid-table, 6th of 14
EE 37%
14%57%
Questions4th lowest of 14
EE 3.0
0.97.0
Long wordsMid-table, 8th of 14
EE 24%
19%31%
Em dashes3rd highest of 14
EE 3.47
0.974.72
AI-associated words4th lowest of 14
EE 0.85
0.462.88
ExclamationsMid-table, 7th of 14
EE 0.48
0.162.28
Page lengthMid-table, 6th of 14
EE 1,086
5111,910

Pages measured: EE 168 · TalkTalk 74 · Hyperoptic 46 · Community Fibre 133 · SMARTY 183 · iD Mobile 49 · Lebara 0 · Lycamobile 112 · O2 138 · Zen Internet 186 · BT 9 · Sky 324 · Virgin Media 185 · Vodafone 172 · Three 141 · giffgaff 63. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009. Sector averages and ranks cover every brand in the sector on this site.

05 · Vocabulary

Words EE 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.

awards92.4 vs 5.5
film85.0 vs 3.5
bafta132.4 vs 0.7
rising84.3 vs 1.0
nominees36.6 vs 1.7
festival28.3 vs 0.9
network88.9 vs 26.5
games42.2 vs 7.0
talent24.6 vs 2.6
population18.2 vs 0.8
jury23.9 vs 0.2
superfast17.1 vs 2.2
EESector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 168 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.

201315 May · Press
“EE, the UK's largest mobile network and only superfast 4G provider, will become the official technology and communications partner of the 2013 Glastonbury Festival, taking over from sister brand Orange.”
Turn it up to 4GEE at Glastonbury Festival 2013
2015May (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“You know we said we're always going to give you the fastest mobile network possible? Well, we meant it.”
Double Speed FAQs

07 · Every page

All 170 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 168 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (2 pdf report (annual report, info pack)). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20265 pages
20254 pages
20245 pages
20237 pages
20228 pages
202112 pages
20204 pages
20198 pages
20187 pages
201710 pages
20168 pages
201535 pages
In the overall numbers, no year55 pages
Not measured2 pages

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

EE'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?.