Brands over time

Thames Water
over time

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

106 of Thames Water's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2024 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
106
Years covered
2024–26
Archived before ChatGPT
0
Blog · press
6 · 100

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Thames Water'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.

2026thameswater.co.uk28 Jun 2026
Thames Water homepage, 28 Jun 2026

Screenshot of Thames Water’s homepage (thameswater.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 28 Jun 2026. © Thames Water or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Thames Water.

Homepage

2026

“Welcome to Thames Water”

Page title

Thames Water - The UK’s largest water and wastewater company

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2010Pay your bill online
  2. 2013Your bill explained
  3. 2016Helping you save.
  4. 2018Inspired by RHS Chelsea?
  5. 2021Save a drop
  6. 2024Welcome to Thames Water

26 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
11.2
10.8
10.9
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
2017no pages
2018no pages
2019no pages
2020no pages
2021no pages
2022no pages
2023no pages
202431 pp
202534 pp
202634 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
202411.231
202510.834
202610.934

Years with pages: 2024 (31), 2025 (34), 2026 (34). 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

Thames 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. Questions

    99% less than its sector

    0.0 against a sector average of 1.4; lowest of 10.

  2. "You"

    87% less than its sector

    3% against a sector average of 24%; lowest of 10.

  3. Em dashes

    71% less than its sector

    0.56 against a sector average of 1.93; lowest of 10.

Sentence lengthLowest of 10
Thames Water 10.7
10.720.8
Contractions3rd lowest of 10
Thames Water 7.9
6.817.1
"You"Lowest of 10
Thames Water 3%
3%50%
"We"Highest of 10
Thames Water 95%
40%95%
QuestionsLowest of 10
Thames Water 0.0
0.03.4
Long wordsHighest of 10
Thames Water 31%
24%31%
Em dashesLowest of 10
Thames Water 0.56
0.563.24
AI-associated words3rd lowest of 10
Thames Water 0.71
0.532.20
ExclamationsLowest of 10
Thames Water 0.07
0.072.62
Page length4th highest of 10
Thames Water 674
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 Thames 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.

property109.8 vs 3.0
retailers43.3 vs 2.4
developers43.5 vs 1.1
billing44.0 vs 0.9
advice47.0 vs 4.4
wholesale43.5 vs 0.6
london38.6 vs 4.5
wipes24.7 vs 1.6
reservoir34.6 vs 4.5
billion21.7 vs 3.6
Thames WaterSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 106 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.

2024 · Press
“Thames Water has signed additional contracts with two major technology companies to support its continued smart meter rollout which aims to reach more than 1 million homes by 2030, with an aspiration to exceed 3-million-meter installations across all its regions by 2035.”
Million plus smart meters coming to Thames Water region
2025 · Press
“As part of its efforts to use water effectively, Thames Water is committed and obligated to protect its clean water supply for customers.”
Illegal connections
2026 · Press
“Thames Water engineers have unearthed a half kilometre wall of congealed fat lurking beneath the roads outside Heathrow Terminal 5, a blockage big enough to stretch between two airport terminals.”
Thames Water clears 500-metre fatberg near Heathrow

06 · Every page

All 109 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 106 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). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

202634 pages
202534 pages
202431 pages
In the overall numbers, no year7 pages
Not measured3 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Thames 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?.