Color of Pen for Filling OMR Sheet

The OMR Sheets can be filled by pen as well as pencil. However, most examination committees nowadays prefer the use of pen instead of pencil. However, you cannot use any type of pen. One has to use ball point pen for filling the OMR sheets. Apart from the type of pen, the color of the pen is also of significance. The OMR software works on the concept of contrast colors and hence searches for and detects dark colors on OMR sheets that are always white.

Ideally, the colors that one should use for filling OMR sheets are black and blue as these are darker than colors like red and green. When the scanned OMR sheets are run in the OMR software, the colors are automatically dropped from the sheet. Here, the black and blue marks become black, while colors like red turn grey, which may not be read by the software.

Apart from the technical reason, the colors green and red are not used on OMR sheets because they have different meanings in the academic world. The color red is usually used by the examiner or evaluator to check the sheets and give marks. Moreover, the color green is used by the exam supervisor or principal.

For all these reasons, always use black or blue pen for filling OMR sheets. In case the instructions page specifically asks you to use either Blue or Black Pen, you should use that color of pen.