Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

The change marks in your book will not show you what moved

Four marks, explained by NFPA in the front of the book. None of them is a moved-material mark, and this is the cycle where moved material is the part that costs you time.

The four marks, and there are only four

NFPA marks a revised edition with shaded text, a delta, a bullet and the letter N. The explanation sits in the front matter of NFPA 70, ahead of Article 90, and it runs to one paragraph.

• Shaded text. The wording in that spot was revised. It is the mark you notice first and the one that tells you least, because a revision can be a comma.
• A delta before a section number. Words inside that section were deleted. A delta to the left of a table or figure number means that table or figure was revised, which is the version worth stopping for, because a revised table changes arithmetic rather than wording.
• A bullet sitting between two sections. One or more sections were deleted there and nothing took the number.
• N. New material. NFPA describes the N as covering chapters, annexes, sections, figures and tables that are new.

There is no mark for material that moved and no mark for material that arrived by tentative interim amendment. A legend with an M or a T in it did not come from NFPA.

The sentence in that paragraph that matters most

After listing the marks, NFPA adds a qualifier that almost nobody quotes.

Note that these indicators are a guide.

NFPA 70, revision symbols, front matter

What follows it is the useful part. NFPA says a rearrangement of sections might not be captured in the markup at all, and points the reader to the draft reports for the full picture.

Set that against what happened for 2026. Load calculations left Article 220 in Chapter 2 and became Article 120 in Chapter 1. Energy management left Article 750 in Chapter 7 and became Article 130. The limited-energy and communications content was rebuilt across the 720s and the old Chapter 8 articles went away. Those are rearrangements, they are the changes most likely to cost a working electrician a minute at the bench, and they are the changes the marks are least reliable about.

So the marks answer two questions well. What is new here, and what wording changed. They do not answer the third one, which is where did this go.

Where NFPA sends you for the moves

The same paragraph names the First and Second Draft Reports, held in the archived revision information for each document on NFPA's own site. They are free, they print the panel actions with added and deleted text marked, and they number sections the way the new edition numbers them.

That is also where anything later than the printing lives. Action taken at the NFPA Technical Meeting, tentative interim amendments and errata are not in the printed marks, because some of them happen after the book is on the press.

It is a slower read than flipping pages. It is also the only account of the moves written by the people who made them.

A pass through the marks in an evening

1. Open the articles you actually work in and hunt the N first. An N is a rule that did not exist last cycle, so nothing you already know covers it and no older material mentions it.
2. Then look for bullets. A deleted section is cheap to spot, because the gap in the numbering is visible on the page, and expensive to miss, because you will keep citing a number that is gone.
3. Leave the shading for last. Most of it is editorial.
4. For anything you cannot find where you expect it, go to the table of contents rather than hunting for a mark. The mark you want might never have been printed.

That last step is the whole point of the page. The marks are a report on the text, not a forwarding address.

What the marks do not settle about a whole article

NFPA describes the N as applying to chapters, annexes, sections, figures and tables, and provides separately for a heavily revised chapter to be marked throughout with the delta. Neither sentence is written at article level.

That gap matters this cycle, because whole articles arrived, whole articles were deleted, and at least two numbers were kept while the subject underneath them was replaced. An unmarked article heading is not evidence that the article came through untouched, and a marked one is not evidence that all of it is new.

Check the article title against the table of contents before you trust the number. It takes five seconds and it is the check the marks cannot do for you.

What this page cites

• NFPA 70, front matter The revision symbols and the note that they are a guide are explained in the front of the code, ahead of Article 90. Read verbatim 24 August 2026 in the 2023 edition front matter, and corroborated the same day against the identical wording in NFPA 79, 2024 edition. Read the front of your own 2026 copy before relying on any wording quoted second hand. source
• NFPA 70 First and Second Draft Reports The archived revision information for NFPA 70, which is where NFPA itself sends readers for changes the printed marks do not capture, including rearranged sections, Technical Meeting action, tentative interim amendments and errata. source
• NEC 90.3 Code arrangement. The 2026 structural changes sit under it.