Brands over time

The INKEY List
over time

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

100 of The INKEY List's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2021 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 8 other beauty brands, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
100
Years covered
2021–26
Archived before ChatGPT
0
Blog · press
0 · 100

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

The INKEY List's homepage from 2020 to 2025, 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.

2025theinkeylist.com3 Jul 2025
The INKEY List homepage, 3 Jul 2025

Screenshot of The INKEY List’s homepage (theinkeylist.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 3 Jul 2025. © The INKEY List or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by The INKEY List.

Homepage

2025

“Hydration on demand. Glow on repeat.”

Page title

INKEY | Free US Shipping On Your First Order

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2020Knowledge is your power
  2. 2021Build YOUR PERSONALIZED SKINCARE RECIPE
  3. 2022Your Basket ( items) (Empty)
  4. 202320% OFF SALE!
  5. 2024TRIPEPTIDE PLUMPING LIP TINTS ARE BACK!
  6. 2025Hydration on demand. Glow on repeat.

6 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
Beauty avg 11.5
12.1
14.8
9.7
13.1
12.5
12.1
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
2017no pages
2018no pages
2019no pages
2020no pages
20212 pp
20221 pp
20232 pp
20241 pp
20255 pp
202689 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
202112.12
202214.81
20239.72
202413.11
202512.55
202612.189

Years with pages: 2021 (2), 2022 (1), 2023 (2), 2024 (1), 2025 (5), 2026 (89). 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

The INKEY List among beauty brands

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. Contractions

    64% less than its sector

    4.9 against a sector average of 13.6; lowest of 9.

  2. Questions

    42% more than its sector

    4.2 against a sector average of 2.9; 2nd highest of 9.

  3. Em dashes

    40% less than its sector

    1.43 against a sector average of 2.40; 3rd lowest of 9.

Sentence lengthMid-table, 4th of 9
The INKEY List 12.1
8.315.6
ContractionsLowest of 9
The INKEY List 4.9
4.918.6
"You"Highest of 9
The INKEY List 75%
33%75%
"We"2nd lowest of 9
The INKEY List 21%
18%60%
Questions2nd highest of 9
The INKEY List 4.2
1.24.2
Long words3rd highest of 9
The INKEY List 28%
22%29%
Em dashes3rd lowest of 9
The INKEY List 1.43
0.765.55
AI-associated words2nd lowest of 9
The INKEY List 0.62
0.402.51
ExclamationsLowest of 9
The INKEY List 0.05
0.053.82
Page lengthHighest of 9
The INKEY List 5,303
5225,303

Pages measured: Boots 46 · The Body Shop 75 · Cult Beauty 134 · LOOKFANTASTIC 132 · Space NK 132 · Neal's Yard Remedies 121 · Molton Brown 37 · The INKEY List 100 · Bulldog Skincare 99. 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 The INKEY List 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.

skin275.2 vs 131.0
barrier42.0 vs 4.4
rather39.9 vs 2.7
moisturizer38.0 vs 2.0
acne33.7 vs 1.8
because32.8 vs 4.3
surface30.3 vs 4.5
ingredient29.3 vs 4.2
actually23.3 vs 1.9
visible24.1 vs 1.2
weeks23.2 vs 1.3
hydration28.7 vs 6.6
routine62.7 vs 27.5
step30.7 vs 8.3
worth22.1 vs 3.8
The INKEY ListSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 100 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.

06 · Every page

All 102 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 100 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.

202689 pages
20255 pages
20241 page
20232 pages
20221 page
20212 pages
Not measured2 pages
  • Inkey Masterclassundated · blog · 699 wordsMostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose
  • Inkey Masterclassundated · blog · 578 wordsMostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

The INKEY List'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?.