Brands over time

Skipton Building Society
over time

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

107 of Skipton Building Society's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2019 to 2025, measured sentence by sentence, 35 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
107
Years covered
2019–25
Archived before ChatGPT
35
Blog · press
78 · 29

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Skipton Building Society'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.

2026skipton.co.uk18 Jun 2026
Skipton Building Society homepage, 18 Jun 2026

Screenshot of Skipton Building Society’s homepage (skipton.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 18 Jun 2026. © Skipton Building Society or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Skipton Building Society.

Homepage

2026

“Welcome to Skipton Building Society”

Page title

Skipton Building Society | Founded on Fairness

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2005Welcome to Skipton Building Society
  2. 2010Welcome to Skipton Building Society Savings Accounts, Insurance and Mortgages
  3. 2014Get in touch
  4. 2017Life Goals Tool
  5. 2020Award winning mortgage provider
  6. 2023The Mortgage Charter

27 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
7.0
6.6
6.9
7.3
19.1
15.4
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
2017no pages
2018no pages
20196 pp
202017 pp
20219 pp
20223 pp
2023no pages
20242 pp
20251 pp
2026no pages
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
20197.06
20206.617
20216.99
20227.33
202419.12
202515.41

Years with pages: 2019 (6), 2020 (17), 2021 (9), 2022 (3), 2024 (2), 2025 (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

Skipton Building Society 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

    69% more than its sector

    3.90 against a sector average of 2.30; 2nd highest of 16.

  2. Questions

    35% more than its sector

    4.1 against a sector average of 3.0; 4th highest of 16.

  3. Contractions

    25% more than its sector

    19.8 against a sector average of 15.8; 3rd highest of 16.

Sentence lengthLowest of 16
Skipton Building Society 11.8
11.818.6
Contractions3rd highest of 16
Skipton Building Society 19.8
9.428.7
"You"6th highest of 16
Skipton Building Society 55%
18%76%
"We"4th lowest of 16
Skipton Building Society 36%
19%77%
Questions4th highest of 16
Skipton Building Society 4.1
0.65.2
Long wordsMid-table, 10th of 16
Skipton Building Society 25%
20%30%
Em dashes2nd highest of 16
Skipton Building Society 3.90
1.263.96
AI-associated words6th lowest of 16
Skipton Building Society 0.57
0.342.27
ExclamationsMid-table, 7th of 16
Skipton Building Society 0.43
0.023.75
Page length3rd highest of 16
Skipton Building Society 1,115
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 Skipton Building Society 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.

planning91.7 vs 4.3
home123.1 vs 18.0
mortgage130.2 vs 24.3
pension45.2 vs 3.6
archive34.6 vs 1.4
lifetime31.4 vs 1.0
retirement36.7 vs 2.7
org34.9 vs 2.4
affordability27.5 vs 0.9
hub31.7 vs 2.0
inheritance26.8 vs 1.0
insurance74.1 vs 14.9
Skipton Building SocietySector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 107 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.

2020Aug (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“When you’re looking for your dream home it’s important to find a balance between your heart and your head. Here are a few things to consider.”
2021May (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“Pension drawdown has become more popular since the 2015 “pension freedoms” were put in place, as you are no longer forced to buy an annuity, opening up more options and flexibility.”
Understanding Pension drawdown: six things you need to know
20264 Jun · Blog
“The car. The phone. The home. The pet who somehow has a better healthcare plan than we do.”
Why protection cover matters

06 · Every page

All 119 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 107 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (4 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 8 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20251 page
20242 pages
20223 pages
20219 pages
202017 pages
20196 pages
In the overall numbers, no year69 pages
Not measured12 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Skipton Building Society'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?.