[6][7] The main alternative at the time was the Revised Standard Version (1946–1952/1971), but it was considered overly theologically liberal in parts.

For the Greek text, Eberhard Nestle and Kurt Aland's Novum Testamentum Graece was used; the 23rd edition in the 1971 original,[9] and the 26th in the 1995 revision.

There remain cases where word-for-word literalness was determined to be unacceptable or impossible, and there, changes were made in the direction of more current idioms.

The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia is also employed together with the most recent information from lexicography, cognate languages, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[12] The updated NASB represents recommended revisions and refinements, and states that it incorporates thorough research based on current English usage.

[13] Vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure were meticulously revised for greater understanding and smoother reading, hence increasing clarity and readability.

[13] Terms found in Elizabethan English such as "thy" and "thou" have been modernized, while verses with difficult word ordering are restructured.

[14][non-primary source needed] Key differences from the 1995 revision include an effort to improve "gender accuracy" (for example, adding "or sisters" in italics to passages that reference "brothers", to help convey the mixed-gender meaning of a passage that might otherwise be misunderstood as only speaking of men), a shift (where applicable) from the common construct "let us" when proposing action to the more-contemporary construct "let's" (to disambiguate a sort of "imperative" encouragement rather than a seeking of permission that could otherwise be misunderstood from a given passage), and a repositioning of some "bracketed text" (that is, verses or portions of verses that are not present in earliest Biblical manuscripts, and thus printed in brackets in previous NASB editions) out from inline-and-in-brackets down instead to footnotes.