Brands over time

NatWest
over time

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

292 of NatWest's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2019 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 84 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 17 other banks, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
292
Years covered
2019–26
Archived before ChatGPT
84
Blog · press
160 · 132

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

NatWest's homepage from 2001 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.

2026natwest.com30 Jun 2026
NatWest homepage, 30 Jun 2026

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

Homepage

2026

“See your savings grow _tax__free_ with our 2 year Fixed Rate ISA”

Page title

NatWest Online – Bank Accounts, Mortgages, Loans and Savings

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2006Save and invest
  2. 2012Our current accounts
  3. 2015Apple Pay is coming
  4. 2021Discover our range of current accounts
  5. 2024Whatever your goals, let's get going
  6. 2026See your savings grow _tax__free_ with our 2 year Fixed Rate ISA

26 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
Banks avg 14.4
12.8
15.7
14.3
13.6
12.8
13.7
12.6
13.1
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
2017no pages
2018no pages
20191 pp
202014 pp
202140 pp
202276 pp
202318 pp
202420 pp
202522 pp
202614 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201912.81
202015.714
202114.340
202213.676
202312.818
202413.720
202512.622
202613.114

Years with pages: 2019 (1), 2020 (14), 2021 (40), 2022 (76), 2023 (18), 2024 (20), 2025 (22), 2026 (14). 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 131 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 56 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 · 131 pp2024 to 2026 · 56 ppChange
Sentence length
14.113.1−6%
Sentence rhythm
0.910.89−2%
Contractions
10.19.1−10%
"You"
30%12%−18 pts
"We"
62%85%+22 pts
Questions
1.40.9−32%
Exclamations
0.130.07−47%
Long words
30%33%+3 pts
Em dashes
2.431.82−25%
AI-associated words
1.111.98+78%
AI-era marketing words
0.751.62+116%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
1.472.41+64%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.400.33−18%
Page length
9261,040+12%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (131 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (56 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

NatWest among banks

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. Questions

    40% less than its sector

    1.8 against a sector average of 3.0; 3rd lowest of 16.

  2. Contractions

    39% less than its sector

    9.7 against a sector average of 15.8; 2nd lowest of 16.

  3. "You"

    33% less than its sector

    32% against a sector average of 47%; 4th lowest of 16.

Sentence length4th lowest of 16
NatWest 13.1
11.818.6
Contractions2nd lowest of 16
NatWest 9.7
9.428.7
"You"4th lowest of 16
NatWest 32%
18%76%
"We"4th highest of 16
NatWest 62%
19%77%
Questions3rd lowest of 16
NatWest 1.8
0.65.2
Long wordsHighest of 16
NatWest 30%
20%30%
Em dashes5th highest of 16
NatWest 2.37
1.263.96
AI-associated words6th highest of 16
NatWest 1.30
0.342.27
ExclamationsMid-table, 10th of 16
NatWest 0.10
0.023.75
Page length5th highest of 16
NatWest 1,001
5261,935

Pages measured: Metro Bank 145 · TSB 170 · Virgin Money 73 · The Co-operative Bank 40 · Chase UK 3 · Zopa 208 · Atom bank 306 · Kroo 67 · Skipton Building Society 107 · Coventry Building Society 2 · Lloyds Bank 210 · Nationwide 91 · Monzo 219 · Barclays 213 · NatWest 292 · Starling Bank 298 · Santander 114 · HSBC 111. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

05 · Vocabulary

Words NatWest 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.

climate33.1 vs 2.6
insights40.7 vs 7.0
economics28.0 vs 0.7
sustainability32.8 vs 4.9
sector36.8 vs 6.7
trends24.6 vs 2.1
technology33.4 vs 8.5
businesses50.6 vs 17.6
enterprise14.4 vs 0.4
management31.8 vs 9.1
events19.2 vs 3.8
NatWestSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 292 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.

2020 · Blog
“After some very high-profile struggles in 2019, retailers are looking to buck the trend in the coming 12 months.”
Vision 2020: retail

07 · Every page

All 305 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 292 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (4 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 9 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

202614 pages
202522 pages
202420 pages
202318 pages
202276 pages
202140 pages
202014 pages
20191 page
In the overall numbers, no year87 pages
Not measured13 pages

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

NatWest'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?.