The ESV could substitute almost transparently for the KJV when reading to the public, while the ESV also has the benefit of omitting KJV words, phrases, and even entire verses that clearly were not part of the original texts, as best represented in the United Bible Society's (UBS) Hebrew and Greek texts.

There are only three instances in the New Testament in which the ESV omitted wording where (1) the UBS Greek New Testament Editorial Committee indecisively retained in square brackets in its definitive Greek New Testament, 4th Revised Edition (UBS4) text and (2) the omissions make a substantive difference in the understanding of those verses. The three instances are Mat 12:47 [textual commentary]; Mat 27:16,17 [texual commentary]; and Col 3:6 [textual commentary]. In each instance the ESV had strong support for its omissions from very early ancient manuscripts, which always include support from Codex Sinaiticus (a.k.a., Aleph or Codex 01, 4th century) and/or Codex Vaticanus (a.k.a., B or Codex 03; 4th century). There are forty other instances where the ESV also omitted wording from its text that the UBS4 retained in bracketed text, but with each of them the omitted wording has virtually no impact on the meaning of the verse, and in every case the ESV had strong support from very early ancient manuscripts, again always including support from Codex Sinaiticus and/or Codex Vaticanus and often from such 2nd and 3rd century manuscripts as P5, P46, P47, P66, P69, and P75. In almost all cases where the ESV did omit the inconclusive UBS4-based bracketed wording, it includes footnotes on the same page, along with the explanation that some ancient manuscripts included the omitted wording.

(The NRSV [book review] also removed some the same text that the ESV removed and sometimes removed text that the ESV did not remove.)

Bruce Metzger (The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, Third Edition, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992, pages 42, 47-48) writes:

Jack Finegan (Encountering New Testament Manuscripts: A Working Introduction to Textual Criticism, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974, page 74) explains that Westcott and Hort earlier had propounded:

[ ] Brackets in the text indicate that the enclosed word, words, or parts of words may be regarded as part of the text, but that in the present state of New Testament textual scholarship this cannot be taken as completely certain. Such passages have a C-rating in the ciritical apparatus... The letter C ... indicates that the Committee had difficulty in deciding which variant to place in the text.

Jack Finegan (ibid., page 69) wrote that the UBS Committee's C rating indicated "that there is considerable degree of doubt." It should be noted that on many verses the conclusions of the UBS Greek NT Editorial Committee as to the correct original wording are not unanimous.