With particular focus on the need to provide a practical, systematic introduction to the concept of sentence combining and to the signals used to control the various combining operations, this paper provides detailed specifications for including sentence combining as part of a comprehensive plan for teaching the composing process. The specifications are discussed in relation to studies of written language development and in comparison with existing sentence combining curricula, both experimental programs and commercially published texts. Problems in sequencing sentence combining instruction are described, and several suggestions are offered for designing a sentence combining program. An appendix lists the content and sequence for instruction and contains sample items. (RL)