Brands over time

Save the Children
over time

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

317 of Save the Children's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 85 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
317
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
85
Blog · press
187 · 130

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Save the Children's homepage from 2000 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.

2026savethechildren.org.uk1 Jul 2026
Save the Children homepage, 1 Jul 2026

Screenshot of Save the Children’s homepage (savethechildren.org.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 1 Jul 2026. © Save the Children or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Save the Children.

Homepage

2026

“Venezuela earthquake appeal”

Page title

Save the Children UK | Children's Charity

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2010Play tennis, save lives
  2. 2013SYRIA CRISIS APPEAL: DONATE NOW
  3. 2016LATEST ON TWITTER
  4. 2020TOGETHER, WE HELP EVERY CHILD BECOME WHO THEY WANT TO BE
  5. 2023Stop the children's food crisis
  6. 2026Venezuela earthquake appeal

25 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
12.2
14.1
11.7
12.2
11.5
13.4
13.0
14.2
12.6
13.4
12.6
13.3
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20157 pp
201614 pp
201718 pp
201814 pp
201920 pp
202035 pp
202133 pp
202244 pp
202334 pp
202435 pp
202529 pp
202623 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201512.27
201614.114
201711.718
201812.214
201911.520
202013.435
202113.033
202214.244
202312.634
202413.435
202512.629
202613.323

Years with pages: 2015 (7), 2016 (14), 2017 (18), 2018 (14), 2019 (20), 2020 (35), 2021 (33), 2022 (44), 2023 (34), 2024 (35), 2025 (29), 2026 (23). 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 132 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 87 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 · 132 pp2024 to 2026 · 87 ppChange
Sentence length
13.313.1−1%
Sentence rhythm
0.850.89+4%
Contractions
11.19.0−19%
"You"
14%15%+1 pts
"We"
70%74%+5 pts
Questions
1.10.8−28%
Exclamations
0.660.24−63%
Long words
27%30%+3 pts
Em dashes
2.642.88+9%
AI-associated words
0.670.81+21%
AI-era marketing words
0.430.46+6%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
0.921.12+22%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.400.45+14%
Page length
1,1471,061−7%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (132 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (87 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

Save the Children 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

    71% more than its sector

    2.90 against a sector average of 1.70; highest of 9.

  2. "You"

    55% less than its sector

    15% against a sector average of 33%; lowest of 9.

  3. Questions

    52% less than its sector

    1.0 against a sector average of 2.1; 3rd lowest of 9.

Sentence lengthMid-table, 5th of 9
Save the Children 13.0
10.317.3
Contractions3rd lowest of 9
Save the Children 10.5
4.622.1
"You"Lowest of 9
Save the Children 15%
15%49%
"We"Highest of 9
Save the Children 71%
39%71%
Questions3rd lowest of 9
Save the Children 1.0
0.03.8
Long words2nd highest of 9
Save the Children 28%
23%30%
Em dashesHighest of 9
Save the Children 2.90
0.482.90
AI-associated words3rd highest of 9
Save the Children 0.65
0.040.86
Exclamations3rd highest of 9
Save the Children 0.46
0.190.88
Page length2nd highest of 9
Save the Children 1,062
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 Save the Children 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.

conflict36.6 vs 4.2
sudan29.1 vs 1.5
education37.3 vs 7.0
war28.3 vs 3.6
poverty31.5 vs 7.5
families49.0 vs 16.9
global25.7 vs 5.8
girls16.6 vs 2.5
climate27.5 vs 8.2
displaced12.9 vs 1.3
Save the ChildrenSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 317 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.

20164 May · PressArchived copy
“The Prime Minister today announced that the government will not stand in the way of an parliamentary amendment that will give a sanctuary in the UK to lone child refugees stranded in Europe.”
Child Refugee Amendment
20207 Dec · BlogArchived copy
“What’s more, we’re aiming to create our most sustainable Christmas Jumper Day yet, encouraging everyone to get crafty and creative to upcycle an old jumper or head to a charity shop for a second-hand vintage bargain rather than buying anything new.”
How our partners are supporting Christmas Jumper Day
202217 Mar · BlogArchived copy
“We’ve been overwhelmed by the generosity of our supporters who’ve donated to or supported our campaign to respond to the crisis in Ukraine.”
How to support refugees from Ukraine

07 · Every page

All 319 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 317 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (2 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

202623 pages
202529 pages
202435 pages
202334 pages
202244 pages
202133 pages
202035 pages
201920 pages
201814 pages
201718 pages
201614 pages
20157 pages
In the overall numbers, no year11 pages
Not measured2 pages

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Save the Children'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?.