SELECTED ASPECTS OF COMPOSITIONS, WRITTEN BY INTERMEDIATE GRADE CHILDREN (FOURTH, FIFTH, AND SIXTH GRADES), WERE STUDIED TO REVEAL GROWTH GRADIENTS OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE BY THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERISTICS (1) SEX, (2) CHRONOLOGICAL AGE, (3) GRADE LEVEL, (4) GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION, AND (5) RESIDENCE AREA. THE SUBJECTS WERE 14,400 CHILDREN IN FOUR GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. EACH REGION WAS REPRESENTED BY FOUR METROPOLITAN AREAS, FURTHER DIVIDED INTO RURAL, SUBURBAN, AND URBAN RESIDENCE CLASSIFICATIONS. THE COMPOSITIONS SUBMITTED BY THE STUDENT SAMPLE WERE ANALYZED IN TERMS OF PARTS OF SPEECH, SENTENCE TYPE, SENTENCE COMPLEXITY, CLAUSES, AND PHRASES. PHRASES WERE DIVIDED INTO FIVE CATEGORIES (NOUN, VERB, ADJECTIVAL, ADVERBIAL, AND ABSOLUTE). THE INCIDENCE OF USE OF SENTENCE FRAGMENTS AND RUN-ON SENTENCES AND THE FREQUENCY OF THE USE OF RIGHT OR LEFT HAND IN WRITING WERE TABULATED. STUDY RESULTS SHOWED THAT RESIDENCE CLASSIFICATION, SEX, INCIDENCE OF RIGHT OR LEFT HANDEDNESS, INCIDENCE OF USE OF RUN-ON SENTENCES, AND INCIDENCE OF USE OF SENTENCE FRAGMENTS PRODUCED NO SIGNIFICANT CORRELATIONS WITH ANY OTHER VARIABLES. THUS, NO IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIPS FOR THOSE VARIABLES EXISTED IN THIS PARTICULAR SAMPLE. GRADE LEVEL AND AGE, HOWEVER, PROVED TO BE HIGHLY RELATED TO EACH OTHER IN ANALYSIS OF THE WRITTEN COMPOSITIONS, PRODUCING A CORRELATION OF .824. (JH)