Brands over time

Hobbycraft
over time

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

120 of Hobbycraft's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2019 to 2022, measured sentence by sentence, 45 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 4 other high street retailers, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
120
Years covered
2019–22
Archived before ChatGPT
45
Blog · press
120 · 0

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Hobbycraft's homepage from 2000 to 2025, 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.

2025hobbycraft.co.uk2 Jul 2025
Hobbycraft homepage, 2 Jul 2025

Screenshot of Hobbycraft’s homepage (hobbycraft.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 2 Jul 2025. © Hobbycraft or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Hobbycraft.

Homepage

2025

“Make more this summer”

Page title

Hobbycraft | Shop Craft Supplies Online

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2013Welcome to Hobbycraft
  2. 2022Celebrate the best of summer
  3. 2024More summer savers
  4. 2025Make more this summer

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.
5
10
15
Shops avg 12.0
8.9
8.9
8.5
7.6
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
2017no pages
2018no pages
201916 pp
202015 pp
20218 pp
20226 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
20198.916
20208.915
20218.58
20227.66

Years with pages: 2019 (16), 2020 (15), 2021 (8), 2022 (6). 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

Hobbycraft among high street retailers

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. "You"

    89% more than its sector

    77% against a sector average of 41%; highest of 5.

  2. Questions

    80% less than its sector

    0.3 against a sector average of 1.5; 2nd lowest of 5.

  3. "We"

    71% less than its sector

    14% against a sector average of 48%; lowest of 5.

Sentence lengthLowest of 5
Hobbycraft 7.5
7.515.2
Contractions2nd lowest of 5
Hobbycraft 7.6
6.019.3
"You"Highest of 5
Hobbycraft 77%
6%77%
"We"Lowest of 5
Hobbycraft 14%
14%68%
Questions2nd lowest of 5
Hobbycraft 0.3
0.12.9
Long wordsLowest of 5
Hobbycraft 20%
20%32%
Em dashesLowest of 5
Hobbycraft 0.73
0.733.00
AI-associated words2nd lowest of 5
Hobbycraft 0.26
0.241.34
ExclamationsMid-table, 3rd of 5
Hobbycraft 2.09
0.023.33
Page lengthLowest of 5
Hobbycraft 889
8891,631

Pages measured: Currys 115 · Hobbycraft 120 · The Works 21 · JD Sports 65 · HMV 189. Measures and method: SGR-010; this sector and its brands were added by Brands over time, measured exactly as the studies measured theirs. Sector averages and ranks cover every brand in the sector on this site.

04 · Vocabulary

Words Hobbycraft 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.

ideas299.1 vs 7.0
idea134.8 vs 2.3
step63.7 vs 2.9
project61.3 vs 2.6
christmas57.6 vs 5.0
card38.6 vs 1.4
projects39.3 vs 1.3
colour45.2 vs 0.9
crochet36.6 vs 3.7
paper40.5 vs 1.0
easter33.0 vs 2.6
paint43.4 vs 0.6
colouring29.7 vs 1.1
kids39.4 vs 7.4
art26.6 vs 2.3
halloween25.1 vs 2.0
HobbycraftSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 120 pages. Checked for product names and page furniture.

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.

201924 Oct · BlogArchived copy
“Top Tip! Tidy up edges by cutting with scissors then felting over and under edges for a neat finish.”
Ideas
202031 Jan · BlogArchived copy
“There are two ways to do this challenging Easter egg hunt. 1 – Treasure hunt style. One egg leads you to the next egg. OR 2 – Check off list style. Give them a print out of the list of clues that they can find in any order. Either way should work fine.”
Ideas
202115 Mar · BlogArchived copy
“Add a striking pop of colour to your room with these vibrant, easy to make punch needle coasters. A perfect way for beginners to get a feel for this traditional craft. Using Cricut you can create your own templates to personalise your punch needle projects.”
Ideas
202221 Jan · BlogArchived copy
“You’ll love getting in on the fun, so what are you waiting for? Leek, comment, share.”
Ideas

06 · Every page

All 193 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 120 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (3 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 70 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20226 pages
20218 pages
  • Ideas14 Oct 2021 · blog · 773 words · archived
  • Ideas3 Sep 2021 · blog · 1,310 words · archived
  • Ideas15 Jun 2021 · blog · 969 words · archived
  • Ideas1 Jun 2021 · blog · 457 words · archived
  • Ideas22 Apr 2021 · blog · 705 words · archived
  • Ideas15 Apr 2021 · blog · 826 words · archived
  • Ideas15 Mar 2021 · blog · 1,237 words · archived
  • Ideas3 Jan 2021 · blog · 761 words · archived
202015 pages
  • Ideas16 Dec 2020 · blog · 2,160 words · archived
  • Ideas7 Dec 2020 · blog · 1,182 words · archived
  • Ideas16 Nov 2020 · blog · 865 words · archived
  • Ideas21 Sep 2020 · blog · 958 words · archived
  • Ideas5 Aug 2020 · blog · 3,119 words · archived
  • Ideas4 Aug 2020 · blog · 765 words · archived
  • Ideas24 Jul 2020 · blog · 927 words · archived
  • Ideas17 Jul 2020 · blog · 840 words · archived
  • Ideas15 Jul 2020 · blog · 640 words · archived
  • Ideas4 May 2020 · blog · 1,312 words · archived
  • Ideas1 May 2020 · blog · 580 words · archived
  • Ideas29 Apr 2020 · blog · 660 words · archived
  • Ideas2 Apr 2020 · blog · 463 words · archived
  • Ideas31 Jan 2020 · blog · 2,557 words · archived
  • Ideas13 Jan 2020 · blog · 482 words · archived
201916 pages
In the overall numbers, no year75 pages
Not measured73 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Hobbycraft'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?.