Brands over time

Three
over time

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

141 of Three's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2018 to 2025, measured sentence by sentence. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 14 other mobile and broadband providers, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
141
Years covered
2018–25
Archived before ChatGPT
0
Blog · press
132 · 9

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Three's homepage from 2003 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.

2026three.co.uk30 Jun 2026
Three homepage, 30 Jun 2026

Screenshot of Three’s homepage (three.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 30 Jun 2026. © Three or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Three.

Homepage

2026

“Phones, Broadband, and SIM Only deals”

Page title

Three | Phones, Broadband & SIM Only deals

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2006We like football.
  2. 2009Got a question ?
  3. 2013Buy on the high street.
  4. 2018100GB on the Best Network for Data.
  5. 2022Save £330 with our family deals
  6. 2025Save up to £252 on the iPhone 16

22 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
Telecoms avg 13.2
16.2
12.5
10.1
12.4
16.3
9.3
11.8
14.0
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
2017no pages
20181 pp
20191 pp
20202 pp
20211 pp
20221 pp
20231 pp
20241 pp
20251 pp
2026no pages
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201816.21
201912.51
202010.12
202112.41
202216.31
20239.31
202411.81
202514.01

Years with pages: 2018 (1), 2019 (1), 2020 (2), 2021 (1), 2022 (1), 2023 (1), 2024 (1), 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

Three among mobile and broadband providers

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

    53% more than its sector

    3.97 against a sector average of 2.59; 2nd highest of 13.

  2. Questions

    52% more than its sector

    6.5 against a sector average of 4.3; 2nd highest of 13.

  3. "We"

    38% less than its sector

    21% against a sector average of 34%; 4th lowest of 13.

Sentence lengthMid-table, 8th of 13
Three 12.9
9.716.5
ContractionsHighest of 13
Three 25.2
12.725.2
"You"4th highest of 13
Three 76%
30%84%
"We"4th lowest of 13
Three 21%
14%57%
Questions2nd highest of 13
Three 6.5
0.97.0
Long words2nd lowest of 13
Three 19%
19%31%
Em dashes2nd highest of 13
Three 3.97
0.974.72
AI-associated words3rd highest of 13
Three 1.64
0.462.88
ExclamationsMid-table, 8th of 13
Three 0.40
0.162.28
Page length5th lowest of 13
Three 807
5111,910

Pages measured: TalkTalk 74 · Hyperoptic 46 · Community Fibre 133 · SMARTY 183 · iD Mobile 49 · Lebara 0 · Lycamobile 112 · O2 138 · Zen Internet 186 · BT 9 · Sky 324 · Virgin Media 185 · Vodafone 172 · Three 141 · giffgaff 63. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

04 · Vocabulary

Words Three 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.

galaxy118.7 vs 9.0
samsung112.3 vs 12.0
fold50.4 vs 2.2
iphone95.4 vs 16.5
flip30.6 vs 2.2
camera55.4 vs 9.0
pixel47.4 vs 8.2
series54.1 vs 11.1
roam17.6 vs 0.6
google55.1 vs 12.6
phone107.0 vs 37.0
xiaomi15.9 vs 0.2
ThreeSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 141 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.

201829 Mar · Blog
“Want to check how much data you’ve got left, or to check a call cost? Get it all in a glance, with the Three app.”
Let's talk about the Three app
201915 Dec · Blog
“Pay As You Go Rewards is a brand new way to earn money off subscriptions, accessories or even a shiny new phone. And it’s exclusive to Pay As You Go customers. Here’s the lowdown on how you can get set up and start loving those benefits.”
Earn Rewards on Pay As You Go
202130 Aug · Blog
“We get it; if you’re a business owner, your phone is your lifeline. Working on-the-go is essential. Staying connected to your team and your customers is critical. Which means having a reliable and affordable network that helps you and your people to be proactive and responsive.”
It's the perfect time to switch to Three Business
202522 Jul · Blog
“The Z Series is Samsung’s range of iconic foldable phones. Phones that start out small but transform into something bigger. So you have more room to do all the things you need, and all the things you love.”
How do Samsung Flip and Fold phones work?

06 · Every page

All 142 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 141 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 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
20241 page
20231 page
20221 page
20211 page
20202 pages
20191 page
20181 page
In the overall numbers, no year132 pages
Not measured1 page

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Three'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?.