A review of the literature on the effects upon student writing performance of variations in essay examination topics reveals that such research is sparce and that most of it has been done in the past 5 years. The review, which was conducted as part of a project to develop the writing test portion of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination, shows that several studies have found a relationship between the mode of discourse specified in a topic and the syntactic complexity of students' writing, and that other studies have investigated the variables of (1) degree of specification of rhetorical context, (2) method of selecting topics, (3) optimum time to allow for writing, and (4) provision of optional topics. The review confirms that not enough research exists to make firm statements about the effects of any of these variables and also shows that there are important differences in attitude toward the importance of topic details between professional testmakers and language educators. (FL)