Brands over time

United Utilities
over time

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

153 of United Utilities's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2016 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 28 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. 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
153
Years covered
2016–26
Archived before ChatGPT
28
Blog · press
12 · 141

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

United Utilities's homepage from 2002 to 2021, 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.

2021unitedutilities.com18 Jun 2021
United Utilities homepage, 18 Jun 2021

Screenshot of United Utilities’s homepage (unitedutilities.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 18 Jun 2021. © United Utilities or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by United Utilities.

Homepage

2021

“How can we help you today?”

Page title

United Utilities Homepage - official site

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2009In the Bathroom
  2. 2012Got a problem?
  3. 2015Manage your water account online
  4. 2017Current incidents in our area:
  5. 2019We're on the telly!
  6. 2021How can we help you today?

16 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
14.4
9.0
14.9
13.1
16.5
17.2
15.2
13.5
13.0
11.3
13.9
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
201635 pp
20171 pp
201814 pp
20195 pp
20209 pp
20219 pp
202211 pp
20236 pp
20243 pp
20254 pp
20262 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201614.435
20179.01
201814.914
201913.15
202016.59
202117.29
202215.211
202313.56
202413.03
202511.34
202613.92

Years with pages: 2016 (35), 2017 (1), 2018 (14), 2019 (5), 2020 (9), 2021 (9), 2022 (11), 2023 (6), 2024 (3), 2025 (4), 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

United Utilities 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. "You"

    107% more than its sector

    50% against a sector average of 24%; highest of 10.

  2. Contractions

    40% less than its sector

    6.8 against a sector average of 11.3; lowest of 10.

  3. Em dashes

    37% less than its sector

    1.21 against a sector average of 1.93; 3rd lowest of 10.

Sentence length3rd lowest of 10
United Utilities 14.5
10.720.8
ContractionsLowest of 10
United Utilities 6.8
6.817.1
"You"Highest of 10
United Utilities 50%
3%50%
"We"2nd lowest of 10
United Utilities 48%
40%95%
Questions4th lowest of 10
United Utilities 0.9
0.03.4
Long words2nd highest of 10
United Utilities 30%
24%31%
Em dashes3rd lowest of 10
United Utilities 1.21
0.563.24
AI-associated words4th lowest of 10
United Utilities 0.79
0.532.20
ExclamationsMid-table, 6th of 10
United Utilities 0.73
0.072.62
Page length3rd lowest of 10
United Utilities 535
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 · 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.

2016 · Press
“It was famous for being known as the dirtiest river in Europe, awash with a deadly cocktail of raw sewage and toxic chemicals.”
United Utilities
20196 Sep · PressArchived copy
“Dozens of the North West’s brightest talents are making a splash in the water industry after landing a place on one of the region’s most sought-after training schemes.”
United Utilities
2025 · Press
“Our annual Developer Day was held on 2nd October at the Totally Wicked Stadium in St Helens. The event welcomed home builders, engineers, construction firms and trade bodies to explore how we can shape a stronger, greener, and healthier North West.”
Developer Day 2025

05 · Every page

All 158 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 153 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, 2 same text as an earlier page from this brand). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20262 pages
20254 pages
20243 pages
20236 pages
202211 pages
20219 pages
20209 pages
20195 pages
201814 pages
20171 page
201635 pages
In the overall numbers, no year54 pages
Not measured5 pages

06 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

United Utilities'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?.