Brands over time

RNLI
over time

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

35 of RNLI's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2016 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 28 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
35
Years covered
2016–26
Archived before ChatGPT
28
Blog · press
3 · 32

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

RNLI's homepage from 2011 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.

2025rnli.org2 Jul 2025
RNLI homepage, 2 Jul 2025

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

Homepage

2025

“Bring crews safely home”

Page title

RNLI - Royal National Lifeboat Institution - Saving Lives at Sea

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2012Welcome to the RNLI
  2. 2018The difference you made in 2017
  3. 2020Lymington Lifeboat Station
  4. 2022Margate Lifeboat Station
  5. 2023Will you answer our Mayday call?
  6. 2025Bring crews safely home

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.
5
10
15
Charities avg 13.4
11.0
12.3
13.3
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
201614 pp
201714 pp
2018no pages
2019no pages
2020no pages
2021no pages
2022no pages
2023no pages
2024no pages
2025no pages
20264 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201611.014
201712.314
202613.34

Years with pages: 2016 (14), 2017 (14), 2026 (4). 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

RNLI 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. Questions

    98% less than its sector

    0.0 against a sector average of 2.1; lowest of 9.

  2. Em dashes

    71% less than its sector

    0.48 against a sector average of 1.70; lowest of 9.

  3. Contractions

    64% less than its sector

    4.6 against a sector average of 12.7; lowest of 9.

Sentence length3rd lowest of 9
RNLI 12.0
10.317.3
ContractionsLowest of 9
RNLI 4.6
4.622.1
"You"Mid-table, 6th of 9
RNLI 30%
15%49%
"We"3rd highest of 9
RNLI 64%
39%71%
QuestionsLowest of 9
RNLI 0.0
0.03.8
Long wordsMid-table, 4th of 9
RNLI 26%
23%30%
Em dashesLowest of 9
RNLI 0.48
0.482.90
AI-associated wordsLowest of 9
RNLI 0.04
0.040.86
Exclamations2nd lowest of 9
RNLI 0.29
0.190.88
Page lengthLowest of 9
RNLI 634
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.

04 · Vocabulary

Words RNLI 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.

rescue95.1 vs 2.0
sea68.5 vs 0.8
station53.3 vs 0.4
ireland79.9 vs 3.8
crew89.8 vs 0.1
owner46.4 vs 1.1
beach35.8 vs 0.2
channel35.8 vs 0.7
lifeboat262.6 vs 0.0
stations32.0 vs 0.2
via54.0 vs 2.4
officer50.2 vs 2.3
RNLISector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 35 pages. Product names and page furniture filtered automatically; list not yet reviewed.

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.

2026 · Press
“The RNLI is an apolitical organisation; we are completely independent of government, powered by remarkable, kind people and fuelled by the incredible generosity of the public.”
Statement from RNLI Chief Executive Peter Sparkes

06 · Every page

All 40 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 35 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 2 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose, 2 under 150 words of text). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20264 pages
201714 pages
201614 pages
In the overall numbers, no year3 pages
Not measured5 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

RNLI'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?.