Remark Office OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) and Web Survey Software

The key to getting great results with Remark Office OMR begins with a well-designed form. Although Remark Office OMR allows enormous flexibility in form design, adequate layout is crucial to recognizing data from scanned forms. By following a few simple guidelines you can expect great results:

Mark Selection

Although Remark Office OMR works with almost any complete shape (i.e., circle, square, triangle), experience indicates that bubbles between 10 and 14 points in height work the best. We recommend a capital "O" in an Arial font or an oval, but squares and triangles work as well. Non-oval shapes are somewhat harder to fill completely. Respondents will typically fill bubbles more completely and neatly, which leads to better recognition rates. Generally, give young people more room both in the size of the marks and in the spacing between the marks since they typically lack the coordination of adults. Experiment with your target group where practical.
It is possible to place numbers or letters inside of marks; however, the number/letter must be as small and light as possible. Dark, thick or bolded characters may cause Remark Office OMR to interpret the mark as being filled. Gravic, Inc. - Remark Products Group has created an encircled letter/number font that you can download and use free of charge.

Spacing

Allow at least 3/8 inch between any text, lines or graphics on the form and any user-markable areas.
Minimize potential errors by separating your marks from one another by at least two character spaces.
Try to stay away from using lines or boxes around or between the bubbles on the form. If you find it necessary to use lines or boxes, consider making the lines a light gray that will drop out (completely disappear) during the scanning process. Note that you cannot photocopy forms that use gray lines as the gray will become too dark. Use clean printouts for forms utilizing gray lines.

Grouping Questions

Place similar types of questions together. For example, place all True/False questions in one area of the form and all multiple choice questions in another. Positioning all of the marks for the same question type in a single field area minimizes your efforts in the OMR Field Definition windows. All marks for a single field must align horizontally and vertically.
When possible, place the labels for a group of questions on the top of each column or at the beginning of each row; this will allow you to select the entire group of questions within one field. If the labels are between marks, then you may have to select questions individually and/or join marks together to form logical questions.

Shading

Remark Office OMR works best with marks printed in black ink without shading; however, shading can be used successfully as long as the shading completely drops out when scanned (a 5-10% gray typically works well). Test your form with your scanner before printing large quantities. Note that you cannot photocopy forms that use shading as the shading will become too dark. Use clean printouts for forms utilizing shading.

Paper

Remark Office OMR works best with plain white paper and black ink. Utilizing standard 20# copier paper works well for single sided forms and 24# paper works well for double sided forms. You can use colored paper (pastel colors tend to work well), as long as the coloring completely drops out when scanned. Test your paper selection with your scanner before printing large quantities of your forms.
Remark Office OMR will support any paper size or thickness supported by your scanner. Consult your scanner's User's Guide for further information.

Photocopies

The accuracy of page placement into the photocopier when copying forms and into the scanner when reading forms are the limiting factors as to how large your margins must be in order to minimize errors. Forms with inadequate spacing will have a low tolerance for offset/skew. Test your form before printing large quantities.
Note: If making photocopies, create your template on the photocopied version rather than the original.