Brands over time

South West Water
over time

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

185 of South West Water's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 9 other water companies, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
185
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
0
Blog · press
82 · 103

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

South West Water's homepage from 2005 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.

2026southwestwater.co.uk7 Jun 2026
South West Water homepage, 7 Jun 2026

Screenshot of South West Water’s homepage (southwestwater.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 7 Jun 2026. © South West Water or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by South West Water.

Homepage

2026

“Hosepipe restrictions remain in place”

Page title

South West Water

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2017On the move
  2. 2018Be water wise
  3. 2019Save water in the garden
  4. 2021Paying my bill
  5. 2023Hosepipe ban update
  6. 2026Hosepipe restrictions remain in place

20 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
Water avg 16.0
16.1
17.1
17.1
17.2
12.8
14.5
13.3
16.6
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20151 pp
2016no pages
20171 pp
2018no pages
2019no pages
2020no pages
20213 pp
20222 pp
20232 pp
20242 pp
20251 pp
20262 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201516.11
201717.11
202117.13
202217.22
202312.82
202414.52
202513.31
202616.62

Years with pages: 2015 (1), 2017 (1), 2021 (3), 2022 (2), 2023 (2), 2024 (2), 2025 (1), 2026 (2). 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

South West Water among water companies

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

    39% more than its sector

    2.68 against a sector average of 1.93; 2nd highest of 10.

  2. "You"

    29% less than its sector

    17% against a sector average of 24%; mid-table, 6th of 10.

  3. Contractions

    24% more than its sector

    14.0 against a sector average of 11.3; 4th highest of 10.

Sentence length4th highest of 10
South West Water 16.9
10.720.8
Contractions4th highest of 10
South West Water 14.0
6.817.1
"You"Mid-table, 6th of 10
South West Water 17%
3%50%
"We"Mid-table, 6th of 10
South West Water 71%
40%95%
QuestionsMid-table, 5th of 10
South West Water 1.1
0.03.4
Long wordsMid-table, 6th of 10
South West Water 26%
24%31%
Em dashes2nd highest of 10
South West Water 2.68
0.563.24
AI-associated words4th highest of 10
South West Water 1.03
0.532.20
Exclamations2nd highest of 10
South West Water 1.63
0.072.62
Page lengthMid-table, 6th of 10
South West Water 608
5141,356

Pages measured: Thames Water 106 · Severn Trent 115 · United Utilities 153 · Anglian Water 26 · Wessex Water 97 · South West Water 185 · Welsh Water 208 · Affinity Water 100 · Scottish Water 16 · South East Water 232. Measures and method: SGR-010; this sector and its brands were added by Brands over time, measured exactly as the studies measured theirs. Sector averages and ranks cover every brand in the sector on this site.

04 · Vocabulary

Words South West Water 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.

dividend12.0 vs 0.7
shareholders11.5 vs 0.7
storm19.8 vs 4.6
growth16.4 vs 3.3
beach8.1 vs 0.5
earnings7.6 vs 0.3
exeter11.4 vs 0.1
bats7.6 vs 0.5
neighbourhood12.0 vs 0.1
bathing10.0 vs 1.5
bournemouth6.5 vs 0.2
South West WaterSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 185 pages. Checked for product names and page furniture.

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.

2021 · Announcement
“One in 16 households in the region became shareholders in South West Water’s parent company, Pennon, heralding a new era in customer ownership. Those customers who didn’t opt to take shares were automatically given a £20 credit on their bill.”
South West Water – Pioneers of a new relationship with customers

06 · Every page

All 187 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 185 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 1 under 150 words of text). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20262 pages
20251 page
20242 pages
20232 pages
20222 pages
20213 pages
20171 page
20151 page
In the overall numbers, no year171 pages
Not measured2 pages
  • Microsoft Word2022 · info_pack · 87,388 wordsPDF report (annual report, info pack): listed, but kept out of every measure
  • RNS Announcementsundated · announcement · 137 wordsUnder 150 words of text: too short to measure

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

South West Water'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?.