Based on the general lack of empirical evidence on the effects of word processors on writing quality, a study focused on changes in writing quality and syntax of first-year college writers who were taught to use word processors as part of their English composition class. The issue addressed was whether using word processors increased the syntactic growth or the holistic writing quality of 200 freshman composition students. The subjects were randomly split into word processing and handwriting sections. Both sections were taught in an identical manner other than the mode of writing, with the instruction centering on teacher-student conferences and revision. Students in each group provided two samples of transactional prose before instruction began and after instruction was completed. The sessions during which they produced the samples were run identically. Findings revealed that word processing students' gain in holistic quality was more than five times that of handwriters; word processing students had a mean pretest to posttest gain in overall writing quality of 2.8 points, while handwriting students had a gain of only .54. In addition, word processing students made far greater gains in total words than did handwriters, and length was directly related to essay quality. However, other syntactic variables, such as use of free modification, number of clauses, average number of words per clause, and type of embedding, were not affected by mode of composition. Sixty-four references are provided. (SKC)