Brands over time

Macmillan Cancer Support
over time

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

290 of Macmillan Cancer Support's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2016 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 63 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
290
Years covered
2016–26
Archived before ChatGPT
63
Blog · press
179 · 111

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Macmillan Cancer Support's homepage from 2003 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.

2025macmillan.org.uk30 Jun 2025
Macmillan Cancer Support homepage, 30 Jun 2025

Screenshot of Macmillan Cancer Support’s homepage (macmillan.org.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 30 Jun 2025. © Macmillan Cancer Support or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Macmillan Cancer Support.

Homepage

2025

“Whoever you are, whatever it takes”

Page title

Macmillan Cancer Support | The UK's leading cancer care charity

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2006Do you need to talk to someone?
  2. 2010Carers of people with cancer need a life of their own.
  3. 2014Sign our open letter to help improve the support carers receive.
  4. 2017Two friends play video games together on a sofa.
  5. 2022The cost of living
  6. 2025Whoever you are, whatever it takes

23 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
7.8
7.8
7.3
7.1
10.5
8.9
11.4
14.4
14.7
15.6
17.2
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
20162 pp
20174 pp
20189 pp
201913 pp
202022 pp
202110 pp
202213 pp
202311 pp
202414 pp
202512 pp
20263 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
20167.82
20177.84
20187.39
20197.113
202010.522
20218.910
202211.413
202314.411
202414.714
202515.612
202617.23

Years with pages: 2016 (2), 2017 (4), 2018 (9), 2019 (13), 2020 (22), 2021 (10), 2022 (13), 2023 (11), 2024 (14), 2025 (12), 2026 (3). 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 58 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 29 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 · 58 pp2024 to 2026 · 29 ppChange
Sentence length
9.715.3+58%
Sentence rhythm
0.720.72−1%
Contractions
10.013.4+33%
"You"
51%23%−28 pts
"We"
35%53%+18 pts
Questions
2.60.8−68%
Exclamations
0.301.00+231%
Long words
22%24%+2 pts
Em dashes
0.581.27+119%
AI-associated words
0.470.80+70%
AI-era marketing words
0.250.56+123%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
0.300.51+69%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.120.07−44%
Page length
445842+89%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (58 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (29 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

Macmillan Cancer Support 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. Em dashes

    52% less than its sector

    0.82 against a sector average of 1.70; 2nd lowest of 9.

  2. "You"

    38% more than its sector

    45% against a sector average of 33%; 3rd highest of 9.

  3. "We"

    28% less than its sector

    39% against a sector average of 54%; lowest of 9.

Sentence length2nd lowest of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 11.3
10.317.3
ContractionsMid-table, 5th of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 11.4
4.622.1
"You"3rd highest of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 45%
15%49%
"We"Lowest of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 39%
39%71%
QuestionsMid-table, 5th of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 2.2
0.03.8
Long words2nd lowest of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 24%
23%30%
Em dashes2nd lowest of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 0.82
0.482.90
AI-associated wordsMid-table, 4th of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 0.64
0.040.86
ExclamationsMid-table, 4th of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 0.46
0.190.88
Page length2nd lowest of 9
Macmillan Cancer Support 697
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 Macmillan Cancer Support 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.

cancer407.6 vs 56.2
treatment60.0 vs 10.5
support206.6 vs 87.6
diagnosed27.0 vs 1.6
living46.4 vs 10.0
coffee24.7 vs 0.4
confidential25.3 vs 3.1
diagnosis26.6 vs 3.7
stories30.6 vs 6.3
booklet38.9 vs 0.2
Macmillan Cancer SupportSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 290 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.

201828 Feb · BlogArchived copy
“A guide answering questions and offering tips to young people living with cancer. It includes insights from young people who have lived with cancer.”
The cancer guide for young people
202017 Feb · Blog
“Emma B has a cuppa with Chloe, who talks about how she dealt with her leukaemia diagnosis as a new mum. Plus common worries and questions when being diagnosed with cancer.”
Talking Cancer podcast

07 · Every page

All 294 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 290 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (3 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose, 1 under 150 words of text). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20263 pages
202512 pages
202414 pages
202311 pages
202213 pages
202110 pages
202022 pages
201913 pages
20189 pages
20174 pages
20162 pages
In the overall numbers, no year177 pages
Not measured4 pages

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Macmillan Cancer Support'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?.