Controversy has characterized the research on writing. On the one side are those who state that, to evaluate achievement in writing, evaluate the writing of students. On the other side are those pointing out the problems associated with direct measures of writing such as low reliability and high cost in terms of time and often dollars. The purpose of this study was to determine if select objectively measured indirect indicators of writing ability do account for scores obtained on holistically scored direct measures of writing ability. The indirect measure was the Missouri College English Test, composed of 90 multiple-choice items assessing punctuation, capitalization, grammar, spelling, sentence style and structure, and paragraph organization. The direct measure was an essay on a general topic, to be written in 30 minutes. Bivariate and multiple correlational analyses were conducted between each subtest of the Missouri test and the essay. All six independent measures together accounted for 26 percent of the variance in the essay scores. These results might make questionable the sole use of indirect measures for making decisions about competence in written English. (Author/BW)