In practice, it was so popular that the various printers had to produce several editions very quickly and churches which retained the BCP drew attention to this fact as something to be noted.
Series 2, issued at the same time, put forward a form which followed the Dix formula: offertory, consecration, fraction, communion.
(Contrary views were expressed by people such as Donald Gray and Roger Arguile, partly on the ground that, following the writings of St Irenaeus, the goodness of the natural order and its relation to the Eucharist was an important element; the offertory brought the world into church).
In 1974, the Worship and Doctrine Measure, passed by the new General Synod allowed the production of a new book which was to contain everything that would be required of priest and congregation: daily Morning and Evening Prayer, Holy Communion, initiation services (Baptism and Confirmation), marriage, funeral services, the Ordinal, Sunday readings, a lectionary and a psalter.
Once again, after a gap of nearly fifteen years, parishes which did not want to use the Book of Common Prayer had in their hands all the words, including readings ordered according to themes and with a two-year cycle.
The Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer provided alternative canticles and all were now ecumenically approved translations, the so-called ICET texts (English Language Liturgical Consultation), but the form was conservative.
The prayer of Humble Access was removed to a place before the Offertory – styled 'the Preparation of the Gifts' and the Four Action Shape was thus given prominence.
All were heavily dependent on scholarly acceptance of the primacy of a third-century work usually termed the Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus, and which had been critically edited and published early in the 20th century.
The Marriage rite followed the 1928 book in no longer suggesting that men might be 'like brute beasts that have no understanding' and allowed readings and a sermon (which the BCP had not).
It was not therefore possible to follow the thought of a particular biblical writer, something that was noted by the Liturgical Commission and was corrected in the ASB's successor, Common Worship.
The book was also the high point of Tractarian influence: apart from retaining something of the Four Action Shape of Gregory Dix, there were set lections for the Blessing of An Abbot, for Those Taking Vows and for Vocations to Religious Communities.
General Synod learned not to repeat the time-hungry debates through which it had been born, and had amended standing orders allowing for a much more expeditious means of liturgical revision.
Some parishes were using the Roman Catholic-derived Revised Common Lectionary, which allowed each Biblical writer to speak in his own voice and on a three-year cycle.
Another notable change, observed during the life of the ASB, was that the text of the Lord's Prayer was originally printed in Rite A only in the modern English form, but later editions printed a more "traditional" version (but adapted to modern grammar - "Our Father, who art in heaven" rather than the BCP's "Our Father, which art in heaven") side by side.