This article examines the publicly available English Examination Notes from the New South Wales Higher School Certificate (HSC) Marking Centre, alongside past research on writing development, to understand the summative assessment of writing and the qualities of writing that examiners identified as discriminating between samples of different grades. The paper draws on the work of the 1980 Crediton Project to code the Examination Notes according to four 'models' of writing development. The dimensions of writing that were identified from students' writing in the 1980s provide an analytical frame through which to read the Examination Notes and consider what they suggest about current approaches to assessing writing.