Brands over time

Homebase
over time

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

121 of Homebase's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, measured sentence by sentence. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 8 other DIY and home brands, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
121
Years covered
–
Archived before ChatGPT
0
Blog · press
121 · 0

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Homebase's homepage from 2005 to 2024, 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.

2024homebase.co.uk2 Jul 2024
Homebase homepage, 2 Jul 2024

Screenshot of Homebase’s homepage (homebase.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 2 Jul 2024. © Homebase or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Homebase.

Homepage

2024

“Our Latest Deals”

Page title

Homebase - All your home needs

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2009Homebase - Make a House a Home
  2. 2019Shop by popular categories
  3. 2021Garden for all seasons
  4. 2022Shop popular categories
  5. 2023Our latest Deals
  6. 2024Our Latest Deals

11 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.

Years with pages: . 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

Homebase among DIY and home brands

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"

    50% less than its sector

    17% against a sector average of 34%; 2nd lowest of 8.

  2. Em dashes

    37% more than its sector

    1.74 against a sector average of 1.28; mid-table, 4th of 8.

  3. "You"

    26% more than its sector

    78% against a sector average of 62%; 3rd highest of 8.

Sentence length3rd lowest of 8
Homebase 12.2
9.716.6
Contractions2nd highest of 8
Homebase 13.9
8.714.3
"You"3rd highest of 8
Homebase 78%
9%88%
"We"2nd lowest of 8
Homebase 17%
7%88%
QuestionsMid-table, 5th of 8
Homebase 2.9
0.16.4
Long words2nd lowest of 8
Homebase 20%
20%31%
Em dashesMid-table, 4th of 8
Homebase 1.74
0.182.24
AI-associated wordsLowest of 8
Homebase 0.49
0.492.59
Exclamations2nd highest of 8
Homebase 1.66
0.001.97
Page lengthMid-table, 4th of 8
Homebase 931
5941,613

Pages measured: Wickes 135 · Screwfix 8 · Homebase 121 · Dunelm 45 · Habitat 35 · Oak Furnitureland 18 · Magnet 88 · Farrow & Ball 16 · Dulux 134. 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 Homebase 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.

christmas85.8 vs 3.0
tree34.7 vs 1.2
lights42.9 vs 6.6
festive22.8 vs 0.9
tip18.6 vs 1.9
lawn18.6 vs 2.4
HomebaseSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 121 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.

20253 Nov · Blog
“When it comes to Christmas decorations, the Christmas tree is the star of the show. But hanging your Christmas tree lights is no small feat. If you want to achieve festive perfection, you'll need a plan before you start hanging.”
How to Put Lights on a Christmas Tree
20255 Nov · Blog
“Drenched in decorations, twinkling with lights and a magical scent of pine. There really is nothing like having a real Christmas tree in your home. And with these simple care tips, you can keep it fresh and healthy all December long.”
How to Care for Your Christmas Tree
202617 Apr · Blog
“Before you start thinking about furniture and accessories, let’s start with a clean slate (literally). Create or replace your patio area with some of our paving slabs. This not only gives you a flat surface to work with but can make a surprising difference to the overall feel of your garden.”
How to transform your patio for under £200

06 · Every page

All 122 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 121 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

In the overall numbers, no year121 pages
Not measured1 page

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Homebase'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?.