See also the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay, a similar award for screenplays that are not adapted from elsewhere.

Following is a listing of people who have won the award.

This award started with the name Best Writing, Adaptation

• 1927/28 Seventh Heaven - Benjamin Glazer from a play by Austin Stong
  • Glorious Betsy - Anthony Coldeway from a play by Rida Johnson Young
  • The Jazz Singer - Alfred A. Cohn from the play Day of Atonement by Samson Raphaelson

• 1928/29 The Patriot - Hanns Kräly from a play by Ashley Dukes translated from the play Der Patriot by Alfred Neumann derived from the story Paul I by Dmitri Merezhkovsky
  • The Cop - William Taylor Garnett from a story by Elliott Judd Clawson
  • In Old Arizona - Tom Barry from the story The Caballero's Way by O. Henry
  • The Last of Mrs. Cheyney - Hanns Kräly from a play by Frederick Lonsdale
  • The Leatherneck - Elliott Judd Clawson original
  • Our Dancing Daughters - Josephine Lovett original
  • Sal of Singapore - Elliott Judd Clawson from the story The Sentimentalists by Dale Collins
  • Skyscraper - Elliott Judd Clawson, William Taylor Garnett from a story by Dudley Murphy
  • The Valiant - Tom Barry, John Hunter Booth from a play by Halworthy Hall and Robert Middlemass
  • A Woman of Affairs - Bess Meredyth fom the novel The Green Hat by Michael Arlen
  • Wonder of Women - Bess Meredyth from the novel Die Frau des Steffen Tromholt by Hermann Sudermann
• 1929/30 The Big House - Joseph Farnham, Martin Flavin, Frances Marion, Lennox Marion original
  • All Quiet on the Western Front - Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, Del Andrews from a novel by Erich Maria Remarque
  • Disraeli - Julien Josephson from a play by Louis N. Parker
  • The Divorcee - John Meehan from the novel Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott
  • Street of Chance - Lenore J. Coffee, Howard Estabrook from the story by Oliver H. P. Garrett

• 1930/31 Cimarron - Howard Estabrook from the novel by Edna Ferber
  • The Criminal Code - Seton I. Miller, Fred Niblo Jr from a play by Martin Flavin
  • Holiday - Horace Jackson from the play by Philip Barry
  • Little Caesar - Francis Edward Faragoli, Robert N. Lee, Robert Lord, Darryl F. Zanuck from the novel by William R. Burnett
  • Skippy - Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Don Marquis, Norman Z. McLeod, Sam Mintz from the comic strip by Percy Crosby
• 1931/32 Bad Girl - Edwin J. Burke from the novel and play by Viña Delmar
  • Arrowsmith - Sidney Howard from the novel by Sinclair Lewis
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Samuel Hoffenstein, Percy Heath from the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson
• 1932/33 Little Women - Victor Heerman, Sarah Y. Mason from the novel by Louisa May Alcott
  • Lady for a Day - Robert Riskin from the story Madame la Gimp by Damon Runyon
  • State Fair - Paul Green, Sonya Levien from the novel by Philip Stong
• 1934 It Happened One Night - Robert Riskin from the story Night Busa by Samuel Hopkins Adams
  • The Thin Man - Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich from a novel by Dashiell Hammett
  • Viva Villa - Ben Hecht from the book by Edgecumb Pinchon and O. B. Stade