Brands over time

Santander
over time

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

114 of Santander's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 34 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
114
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
34
Blog · press
47 · 67

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Santander's homepage from 2009 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.

2026santander.co.uk30 Jun 2026
Santander homepage, 30 Jun 2026

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

Homepage

2026

“Get 3% cashback in your first year”

Page title

Personal | Santander UK

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2009We are excited to announce that…
  2. 2016Tools & guides
  3. 2021Or take the first step to becoming a homeowner, with our 5% deposit mortgages
  4. 2022Our support for the situation in Ukraine
  5. 2024Santander Edge gives customers cashback on household bills
  6. 2026Get 3% cashback in your first year

14 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.
8
16
24
Banks avg 14.4
11.6
11.3
16.3
17.3
16.7
16.9
17.7
15.2
22.8
11.5
18.0
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20151 pp
20161 pp
20174 pp
20184 pp
20193 pp
20208 pp
20217 pp
20227 pp
2023no pages
20241 pp
20253 pp
20261 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201511.61
201611.31
201716.34
201817.34
201916.73
202016.98
202117.77
202215.27
202422.81
202511.53
202618.01

Years with pages: 2015 (1), 2016 (1), 2017 (4), 2018 (4), 2019 (3), 2020 (8), 2021 (7), 2022 (7), 2024 (1), 2025 (3), 2026 (1). 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

Santander 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. Em dashes

    45% less than its sector

    1.26 against a sector average of 2.30; lowest of 16.

  2. Contractions

    38% less than its sector

    9.8 against a sector average of 15.8; 3rd lowest of 16.

  3. "We"

    23% more than its sector

    58% against a sector average of 47%; 5th highest of 16.

Sentence length5th lowest of 16
Santander 13.2
11.818.6
Contractions3rd lowest of 16
Santander 9.8
9.428.7
"You"5th lowest of 16
Santander 40%
18%76%
"We"5th highest of 16
Santander 58%
19%77%
QuestionsMid-table, 8th of 16
Santander 3.0
0.65.2
Long words3rd highest of 16
Santander 29%
20%30%
Em dashesLowest of 16
Santander 1.26
1.263.96
AI-associated wordsMid-table, 9th of 16
Santander 0.95
0.342.27
ExclamationsLowest of 16
Santander 0.02
0.023.75
Page lengthMid-table, 9th of 16
Santander 956
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.

04 · Vocabulary

Words Santander 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.

below104.5 vs 4.4
touch77.6 vs 2.0
details90.5 vs 7.7
development58.5 vs 3.1
simple64.4 vs 6.1
commercial53.6 vs 3.7
business212.2 vs 63.7
using72.9 vs 12.0
banking123.6 vs 29.9
icon34.0 vs 2.0
turnover28.6 vs 0.8
businesses91.0 vs 18.5
SantanderSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 114 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.

2018 · PressArchived copy
“Figures published today by Santander UK reveal there were 193,984 complaints received by the bank during the first half of 2018, a 5.6 per cent increase on the number reported for the second half of 2017.”
Santander uk publishes complaints data
2022 · Press
“Prices have risen sharply in Britain and around the world over the past 12 months as demand has soared, and supply chain problems caused by the pandemic have disrupted global trade.”
Financial Market Review – March 2022
20245 Jun · Press
“New Facebook Marketplace fraud protection measures introduced by Santander before Christmas have helped stop over 1,800 customers from potentially falling victim to a purchase scam.”
Over 1,800 customers saved from scams
2025 · Press
““The results of the stress testing exercise highlight once again Santander’s strong capital position and prudent balance sheet management, providing further confidence that the bank can withstand a severe shock. Our customers can be confident that we are well positioned to continue lending to help people and businesses prosper.””
Santander passes 2025 Bank of England Stress Test

06 · Every page

All 118 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 114 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (3 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 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.

20261 page
20253 pages
20241 page
20227 pages
20217 pages
20208 pages
20193 pages
20184 pages
20174 pages
20161 page
20151 page
In the overall numbers, no year74 pages
Not measured4 pages
  • Annual Report7 Mar 2025 · info_pack · 165,641 wordsPDF report (annual report, info pack): listed, but kept out of every measure
  • Santander Media Awards 2016 shortlist announced2016 · press · 849 words · archivedMostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose
  • Annual Reportundated · info_pack · 129,076 wordsPDF report (annual report, info pack): listed, but kept out of every measure
  • YE-25 RFBundated · info_pack · 131,017 wordsPDF report (annual report, info pack): listed, but kept out of every measure

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Santander'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?.